379. Algerian Revolution: Black Panthers, LSD, & Nina Simone (Ep 5)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Empire – Ep 379: Algerian Revolution: Black Panthers, LSD, & Nina Simone (Ep 5)

Podcast: Empire: World History
Hosts: William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Release Date: July 19, 2026
Episode Title: Algerian Revolution: Black Panthers, LSD, & Nina Simone (Ep 5)
Main Theme:
An exploration of post-independence Algeria as a paradoxically glamorous but increasingly authoritarian hub for international revolutionaries, countercultural celebrities, and global liberation movements, woven together with the philosophical legacy of Frantz Fanon and the lived consequences for both Algerians and French settlers.

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Overview

This episode traces Algeria’s journey immediately after its hard-won independence from France in 1962, examining how it became the “Third World’s revolutionary capital” while simultaneously succumbing to militaristic control, endemic oppressions, and economic mismanagement. The episode blends political history with vivid anecdotes: from internecine struggles for power within Algeria to the unlikely cast of radicals, writers, musicians, and counterculture icons who converged on Algiers in the 1960s and early 70s.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Birth of Post-Independence Algeria ([00:50]–[04:29])

• Algeria’s independence (July 5, 1962) marked by jubilant crowds—but the joy is short-lived, as the ruling FLN fractures.
• Houari Boumédiène: Officer who emerges as de facto leader after marching into Algiers with his “exterior army.”
  • “He sort of looks like a thunderstorm made flesh... granite-like... Little is known about his early life, but I can tell you that his father says he was born in 1932 and he should know.” – William Dalrymple [02:46]
• Power Struggles:
  • Boumédiène installs Ahmed Ben Bella as president, but rivalries soon lead to a coup (1965) and military dictatorship under Boumédiène’s “Revolutionary Council.”

2. Paradox of Revolutionary Chic vs. Authoritarian Reality ([04:29]–[07:34])

• Despite a new oppressive regime, Algeria gains prestige as the model postcolonial state, inspiring liberation movements worldwide.
  • “Algeria has this significance and this prestige way beyond its size or its wealth... everyone is now studying the FLN’s method... the city becomes the revolutionary capital of the world.” – Anita Anand [04:29]
• Mirrors post-revolutionary Moscow as a training ground for anti-imperial struggle.

3. Algeria’s Role in Global Non-Aligned and Anti-Colonial Movements ([08:05]–[10:00])

• Vast oil and gas reserves unlock ambitious—but state-run—industrialization.
• Hosting the Fourth Non-Aligned Movement Summit (1973): Algeria courts high-profile leaders (Castro, Gandhi, Gaddafi, etc.) and calls for a “new international economic order.”
  • “Boumédiène addresses these people... and calls for a new international economic order, a redistribution of global wealth from the industrialized world to the developing south.” – Anita Anand [08:39]

4. The Legacy of Frantz Fanon ([10:00]–[16:25])

• Martinique-born psychiatrist, war hero, and theorist whose work deeply shaped the era’s revolutionary thought.
  • “He comes back from the Second World War with two things: A Croix de Guerre medal for his heroism, and this big burning question about what it meant to be French and to be black.” – Anita Anand [10:26]
• His book The Wretched of the Earth made two seismic points:
  • Violence as an inherent mechanism of colonial control—the colonized can only reclaim humanity through counter-violence.
  • New elites in postcolonial states will simply take up the mantle of old colonial systems.
  • “Four legs good, two legs better... the end of Animal Farm where the pigs are just as bad, if not worse.” – William Dalrymple [14:54]
• Fanon’s prophecy proved true: Algeria’s promise of liberty turned quickly into one-party militarism.
• Fanon died in 1961—months before Algeria’s independence.

5. Algiers as Magnet for the World's Revolutionaries & Counterculture ([18:46]–[26:22])

• Memoirist Elaine Mokhtefi (née Klein): New York Jewish radical drawn to Algiers, alongside other revolutionary figures.
• Algiers as a gathering point for liberation and guerrilla groups: Viet Cong, ANC, PLO, Polisario Front, Black Panthers, etc.
  • “It’s like a roll call of everybody who’s going to give the CIA a headache...” – William Dalrymple [21:19]
• Pan-African Festival of Algiers (1969):
  • 5,000+ attendees including Maya Angelou, Nina Simone (who debuts “Ne me quitte pas”), and Black Panther leaders like Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver.
    • “Christians make pilgrimages to the Vatican. Muslims go to Mecca. National liberation movements go to Algeria.” – Amilcar Cabral, quoted by William [23:25]
  • Algiers becomes both a genuine revolutionary hub and a sort of glamorous anti-colonial “Cannes meets Marrakech.”

6. Timothy Leary, the Black Panthers & the LSD Years in Algiers ([24:55]–[30:17])

• Timothy Leary, icon of psychedelia, flees U.S. prison for possession of marijuana and seeks asylum in Algeria.
  • “He is issuing communiques and the international press are coming and sitting by his soiled feet saying, ‘Tell us more, Timothy Leary, about how to free our minds and the rest will follow.’” – William Dalrymple [26:22]
• Clashes with Black Panthers—Eldridge Cleaver denounces Leary’s “madness of psychedelic culture,” puts him and his wife under house arrest (termed “revolutionary arrest”).
  • “Psychedelic drugs were harmful to our cause and counter revolutionary.” (Eldridge Cleaver, NYT, quoted by Anita Anand [28:51])
• Cleaver’s extraordinary journey: from Black Panther leader to Paris fashion designer (notably “trousers for men with a special penis pouch”), flirtation with Zionism, Mormonism, founding his own hybrid religion, and finally, the Republican Party.
  • “Can anybody explain to me, Eldridge Cleaver? Answers on a postcard, please.” – William Dalrymple [32:09]

7. Algeria’s Authoritarianism, Marginalization of Islamists & Economic Mismanagement ([32:09]–[36:04])

• The “worker self-management” ideal soon dismantled in favor of state-run, Stalinist-style industries.
• Religious establishment—the ulema— sidelined, sowing the seeds for future Islamist upheavals.
  • “This stokes up resentments that will explode in the Islamist revolutions... which plague Algeria more recently and which we’re just coming out of now.” – Anita Anand [33:48]
• Oil wealth invested in prestige projects rather than the welfare of ordinary Algerians.
  • “The wretched of the earth, as Fanon put it, are still wretched. They had different masters, but they’re really no better off.” – Anita Anand [35:58]

8. The Exile of the Pied-Noirs and Harkis ([36:04]–[43:08])

• Over a million pied-noirs (French settlers) and thousands of harkis (Algerian auxiliaries for the French military) flee Algeria.
  • Slogan: “La valise ou le cercueil (the suitcase or the coffin).” – Anita Anand [36:34]
• Exoduses marked by dispossession, discrimination, and mass trauma; Harkis suffer additionally as targets for FLN retribution and French state neglect.
  • “They (the Harkis) had risked their lives... and end up being treated very shabbily by French who had also faced the same dispossession.” – William Dalrymple [39:38]
  • Many Harkis are massacred or interned; even families who escaped to France wound up in camps and remained socially marked for generations.
• Modern resonance: The trauma of Algeria still shapes French politics (notably the rise of Marine Le Pen) and Algerian identity in France decades later.
  • “This is not 1960s stuff... This is absolutely contemporary because in the forthcoming French election, Marine Le Pen is going to be standing on behalf of the party... established by her father in the aftermath of the Pied-Noirs having to flee Algeria.” – Anita Anand [43:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He sort of looks like a thunderstorm made flesh... granite-like.” – William Dalrymple on Houari Boumédiène [02:46]
• “Christians make pilgrimages to the Vatican. Muslims go to Mecca. National liberation movements go to Algeria.” – Amilcar Cabral (quoted) [23:25]
• “Can anybody explain to me Eldridge Cleaver? Answers on a postcard, please.” – William Dalrymple [32:09]
• “La valise ou le cercueil (the suitcase or the coffin).” – Anita Anand [36:34]
• “The wretched of the earth, as Fanon put it, are still wretched. They had different masters with different complexions, but they’re really no better off.” – Anita Anand [35:58]
• “This is not 1960s stuff... This is absolutely contemporary because in the forthcoming French election, Marine Le Pen is going to be standing on behalf of the party... established by her father in the aftermath of the Pied-Noirs having to flee Algeria.” – Anita Anand [43:08]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [00:50] – Opening scene: July 5, 1962 – Independence, victory, and FLN fracturing
• [02:46] – Profile of Houari Boumédiène
• [04:29] – Algeria’s paradox: revolutionary chic vs. authoritarian rule
• [08:05] – Non-Aligned Movement Summit and Algeria’s global role
• [10:25] – Introduction of Frantz Fanon’s life and theories
• [13:27] – Core arguments of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth
• [18:46] – Colorful influx of global revolutionaries and countercultural icons
• [21:19] – Revolutionary organizations and festival attendees in Algiers
• [23:35] – Pan-African Festival and Nina Simone’s performance
• [24:55] – Timothy Leary’s arrival and tension with Black Panthers
• [29:09] – Black Panthers’ denouncement and house arrest of Leary
• [32:09] – Cleaver’s post-Algeria metamorphoses
• [36:04] – The exodus of the pied-noirs and harkis; impacts on France/Algerian diaspora
• [43:08] – Contemporary echoes in French politics; episode wrap-up

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Conclusion

This episode of Empire delivers a vivid, wide-ranging portrait of post-independence Algeria—a nation caught between its revolutionary promise and all-too-familiar patterns of authoritarianism, external fascination, and internal trauma. Through stories both poignant and surreal, Dalrymple and Anand show how Algeria became both a template and warning for postcolonial nations and how its legacy shapes modern Europe and Africa.

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For More

• Bonus Content: Interview with Farah Monjour on contemporary Algerian identity in France (join Empire Club at empirepoduk.com)
• Recommended Reading: “Algiers: Third World Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, and Black Panthers” by Elaine Mokhtefi

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Summary compiled and structured using the original tone, language, and rich anecdotes of the hosts and guests as referenced in the transcript.

Transcript

[Anita Anand]

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat, community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire [e-mail].

[William Dalrymple]

this episode is brought to you by Starbucks.

[Anita Anand]

That is fire.

[William Dalrymple]

Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it. Okay, try it for yourself. Starbucks refresh. Precious concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. Hello and welcome to Empire with me,

[Anita Anand]

Anita Anand and me, William Dalrymple. We have a cracker of an episode now. I have enjoyed so much the reading and research for this whole series, but nothing surprised me more than the story of what happens in Algeria after independence arrives. So we pick up the story in 1962 as the newly liberated Algeria transforms into the rather surprisingly glamorous revolutionary capital of the Third World. And we ask, what happens after a bloody revolution is one.

[William Dalrymple]

Now, we sort of teased you about this in the previous episode. This will be a star studded episode of the podcast. But. But let's take you back to this day, which is very important. It's July 5, 1962, and enormous crowds have gathered in Algiers. People who have waited eight long years, who have survived some dreadful conditions, bombing, torture, forced relocation, basically they've lost everything. And now you've got hundreds of them in the streets, actually hundreds of thousands of them in the streets, I should say, you know, just as it looks like you've got Algeria at the height of its powers, the fln, the organization that brought this to be, fractures. It just completely disintegrates. So, you know, why, why did that happen? Well, you could say the exterior army forces that had been training in Tunisia and Morocco, you know, largely untouched by the war inside Algeria. They marched on Algiers under command of a man called Houari Boumeddin. Now, Houari Boumedine is a man who is determined that this new state is going to be under his control. And we should describe what he looks like. I mean, he sort of looks like a thunderstorm made flesh, I think, you know, sort of quite frowny. He's got that sort of long stone.

[Anita Anand]

He's definitely on the frowny side.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, sort of Easter Island Y kind of face, you know, and he doesn't look like, you know. Laughter comes to him very easily.

[Anita Anand]

He's even got the Easter island haircut.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, there is something granite like about him. Little is known about his early life, but I can tell you that, you know, his father says he was born in 1932 and he should know. His mother would know better in a religious rural family. And this is a family, interestingly, that doesn't speak French. So in 1952, Boahri goes to Cairo to study at university and he meets a very important character, Ben Bella. You remember we talked about Ben Bella Willie in the last episode.

[Anita Anand]

He's the guy that gets abducted, isn't he, when he's on his plane. This was a big crisis in the last episode.

[William Dalrymple]

Exactly, because he's seen as a NAS uprising leader. And so he just gets whisked away to some black site and, you know, hopefully they, the French are never seen again, but they're wrong about that. Anyway, so this man Boumedienne decides that this new state is going to be under his control. That's what's going to happen, that's what it's going to look like. And you know what, he takes on Ben Bella, he takes on the new president who is very popular, and he wins. He does install Ahmed Ben Bella as president. But, you know, this is a shaky relationship because you've got these two sort of massive egos who are looking to build themselves some kind of legacy. And this revolution that, you know, has been fought for, so much blood and coin has been spent on it, you know, liberty supposedly in the hands now of the Algerians, immediately turns into something that doesn't feel very liberated at all. A one party state where you have the military holding onto all the power. And, you know, you immediately get that sense, Willy, don't you, that dissent is not going to be tolerated.

[Anita Anand]

You do. And yet there's this sort of strange paradox because alongside this sort of depressing feeling that it's every bit as authoritarian as it's always been. Despite the new rulers, Algeria has this significance and this prestige way beyond its size or its wealth. Or indeed it's sort of, you know, how nice it is to be living in Algeria at this point because the fact that it had won independence at this moment in the early 60s, with all this revolutionary fizz going around the world from, you know, Latin America through the PLO right through to Vietnam. This is very much the kind of late 50s, early 60s dream of throwing out the colonial overlord by revolutionary power. They have defeated France after eight years of really tough guerrilla war. Everyone is now studying the FLN's method. How did they achieve independence? How did they get rid of the French? And everyone's looking at it in. In terms of guerrilla tactics, also its political program, and the way that they got the whole Arab world on side, internationalized the struggle also to the UN through disciplined violence and a media strategy. And this becomes the template for the next range of liberation struggles from Vietnam to South Africa and also to Palestine. And Algeria now hosts the leaders of every liberation movement that could get on a flight to Algiers. And the city becomes, for a decade, this. I mean, it's something that I certainly don't have fixed in my head as an image of Algiers. But the city becomes the revolutionary capital of the world. You know, within that moment of 1960s revolutionary chic, it is the chicest place to be.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, the only parallel I can think of is Moscow after the revolution, where every enemy of any empire goes to be trained and sort of sits and learns methodology. You would have this, you know, these heroes, these poster boys for revolution, and yet the relationship between them is dreadful. So you've got sort of, you know, Boumedienne and Ben Bella pretty much at each other's throats. You know, Ben Bella immediately starts to marginalize the very militaristic Boumedienne. Boumedienne then says, right, well, I'm not having that, and gets closer still to the military. And in 1965, he orchestrates a carefully planned couple. The military took control of Algiers. They take Ben Bella, they throw him behind bars. Boumedien then announces himself president. And he decided to run the country through something called the Revolutionary Council. And, you know, we've heard this playbook before, and we will hear it again. It's going to a group of generals who decides, without any kind of question from any kind of democratic forum, the fate of the country and the people. So under Boumedian's leadership, it is a military state. It's basically a military junta that is running a newly born liberated Algeria.

[Anita Anand]

And what makes it important, apart from its prestige as a revolutionary center and the place that threw out the wicked French at this point in its history, vast oil and gas reserves are discovered under the Sahara. People have been aware that there's oil and gas there. But the full scale of what is sitting under the sand now becomes very clear. And it funds this incredibly ambitious program of nationalization and industrialization under Boumedienne.

[William Dalrymple]

Another important thing that Boumedien does, because I guess he must be sensitive to the fact that a lot of credibility has been squandered by suddenly having a military coup and a military junta. He decides to host carry on this feeling that Algiers is the centre of, of dissent and freedom. So he hosts the fourth Non Aligned Movement Summit in Algiers. And we should say what, you know, the Non Aligned Movement is. It's something that sprung out of the Bandung conference in the 1950s. Just to remind you who were the founding members of this. You had Tito of Yugoslavia, Nehru of India, Nasser from Egypt, Nakrumah from Ghana, and Sukamo from Indonesia. The Non Aligned Movement is basically based on the premise that in this cold war where these giants are going at each other, we will not be the chess pieces in some new great game. We're not doing that. We are non aligned and we will make decisions based on our own interests. So Boumadien says, okay, I'm going to host one of these. And then people will still believe we are the center of dissent and we have that credibility still. And this fourth meeting involves Fidel Castro, Indira Gandhi, Gaddafi. You know, presidents and prime ministers of. Of 26 countries come to Algeria. And Boumedien addresses this, you know, these people, just as he addressed the United nations the same year and calls for a new international economic order, a redistribution of global wealth from the industrialized world to the developing south. Now, again, I mean, how, you know, contemporary does this sound? We have similar speeches given in the United nations even today. So, you know, just for that moment, Algeria becomes genuinely one of the most influential voices in global politics, if you like, the last great assertion of Arab sovereignty before a series of defeats and disillusionments that marks the 20th century.

[Anita Anand]

Eugene Rogan was so good about that moment of disillusion that comes in 1967. But we're what now? In 1965? This is just two years before. And then woven into this story, which adds a real richness when you're reading about it, is this extraordinary character and a man whose ideas very much shaped the thought of this period. And that's Frantz Fanon.

[William Dalrymple]

He's so interesting.

[Anita Anand]

And anyone that's ever read anything about postcolonial anything will have come across at some level, Frantz Fanon. He's born in 1925 at the other side of the world, on the Caribbean island of Martinique, which is another French overseas territory that's also part of France. It still is Martinique. You go there, it's French border guards that greet you at the airport. To understand Frantz Fanon, you have to understand that he's a child of the French empire's further streets. He's educated in French schools where the first three words he's taught to spell are je Suis Francais, I am French. And he grows up just to add to the complexity of it under the Vichy regime. But volunteers for the Free French forces at 17 fights in North Africa. And he comes back from the Second World War with two things. A Croix de Guerre medal for his heroism and this big burning question about what it meant to be French and to be black simultaneously, in a sense, inhabit a body that the French education system has made you to some extent despise.

[William Dalrymple]

If that wasn't sort of interesting enough, you then have this move to Algeria when he's just 28 years old, Fanon, in 1953. And he goes to run the psychiatric department in Lyon. It's a place called Blido Joinville Hospital in Algeria. And he studies in Lyon psychiatry. He goes to Blidow Joinville Hospital in Algeria in 1953, and he's the head of the psychiatric department. He's really young. I mean, you just sort of tell how capable. He's 28 years old and he's heading up this department. And what really changes him? As if, you know, that dichotomy of who he was wasn't enough to sort of mold the new man. He, in his psychiatric position, sees Algerian civilians on a daily basis and treats them. And these people are broken because they have been broken by torture and loss and grief. And in the same wards, he's also treating French soldiers and police officers who carried out the torture. Just. I mean, just imagine the discomfort. And again, you know, that kind of fracturing of two different identities rammed into one, you know, sort of asylum, if you like.

[Anita Anand]

Extraordinary moment, isn't it? Absolutely extraordinary. Here he is at this moment looking after both sides in a psychiatric ward.

[William Dalrymple]

But what he takes away from it, Willi, which I think is just, again, really interesting about Vanon, he comes away with this thesis. It is disillusioning. And so he resigns from French government service. He's not going to work with him anymore in 1956. And this act of defiance, if you like, leads to him being expelled from Algeria. So he joins the fln, their external apparatus in Tunisia. So, Willie, then he writes this key text, which is still taught in every colonial history module even today. The Wretched of the Earth. Just tell us what the wretched of the earth is all about.

[Anita Anand]

So I'm sure many people listening to this have come across it at some point in their education, but it's published in 1961, and it makes two principal arguments, and they really burn themselves into the consciousness of people engaged in these liberation movements in the 1960s. And the first is the idea that colonial violence is not an anomaly, but it's the system's essential mechanism. That's how it works. That the colonized man is kept in line by violence from the metropolis, and the only way he can reclaim his humanity is through counter violence. And this is the first time it's really expressed in these terms. Cause this is very much how people think of it today. But this is the first time that it's framed in. In this way. And the second which leads onto that is a very prescient warning about what is likely to happen after independence. It's not specific to Algeria, but it does indeed predict what happens. And he predicts that the new national elite in newly independent states will not build a new society. They will simply take over the old colonial apparatus and replace European metropolitan white faces with the local version with African or Asian ones.

[William Dalrymple]

Dare I say four legs good, two legs better. You know, the end of Animal Farm where the pigs are just as bad, if not worse.

[Anita Anand]

I wonder whether he'd read Orwell. Do you think he had?

[William Dalrymple]

I wonder. I would make you. Well, somebody read somebody because, you know, or it's just a prevalent insight of the time. You see this going on around you in the world. I mean, and of course, there's going to be the zeitgeist thing.

[Anita Anand]

And it's sort of just beginning now, Obviously, throughout the 70s and 80s, we see it happening all over in Burma, in Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, to a certain extent India, where, you know, certainly the new rulers of India today, the Modi India, very much beats Nehru with the brush. They're just a brown face on the British system with the British accent.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, I was going to say Pakistan is an even more pressing example where you have, you know, Zia Ahaq, you know, a country gains its independence, has freedom, talks about being founded on freedom, and then you have a military coup and a general who hangs opposition leaders. It is something that we recognize through history. And he recognized it. Fanon. The thing is that he recognized it right before anybody else and wrote this really rather extraordinary book about it. So what, in effect he does is, you know, though he doesn't live even to see this, is he described Algeria's future because Fanon dies of leukemia in Bethesda Hospital in Maryland in December 1960.

[Anita Anand]

Of all the places for Fanon to die, he dies in America.

[William Dalrymple]

So three months before the independence of the country whose revolution Heeds served. You know, who's broken people he tried to put back together. He didn't Even see it breathe its first liberated breath. And he was only 36 years old. After the break, Willy, should we talk about this star studded side of post independence Algeria? Because it is quite the most unlikely gathering of people and celebrities flocking to the country. Yeah, let's get to that. Join us then.

[Mary Beard]

I'm Mary Beard.

[Josephine Quinn]

And I'm Josephine Quinn. At the Rest Is Fest this September, we're putting on a show that can only be described as an iconoclastic romp through the ancient world.

[Mary Beard]

We're talking about leaders behaving badly, emperors putting their horses in charge, cities built by asylum seekers and empires getting their comeuppance. There will be some proper myth busting, but we'll also be asking why these myths matter even when we know they're wrong.

[Josephine Quinn]

So if you love your ancient history and you're free on September 6th, get your ticket now and join us at London's South Bank Centre.

[Mary Beard]

Tickets are on sale now. Just visit Southbankcentre.co.uk.

[Josephine Quinn]

that's Southbankcentre.co.UK.

[Anita Anand]

a quick word for our Empire listeners. For a limited time only, we are running a date discount on the Empire Club.

[William Dalrymple]

We totally are. It's our summer sale. It's live now and from now until the end of August all you need to do is head to empirepod uk.com empirepod uk.com use the code summer26. Summer 26. You get an extra 20% off annual

[Anita Anand]

membership this sizzling summer. We would love you to join our Empire Club and we know you will love being a member of our community. You'll get bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and much more.

[William Dalrymple]

And your summer trips provide you that perfect opportunity to dive into our archives and catch up on all the exclusive content you might have missed before joining. So you can listen to our interview with Jung Chang, our Willy's fabulous bonus on Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl earring and our exclusive four part member series covering the scandal that shaped partition.

[Anita Anand]

So make the most of the deal before it ends at the end of August 2026. The code is Summer 26 to be used on our annual [e-mail] we'd love you to become a member of our club and it's brilliant even if we say so ourselves. Welcome back. So we are now going to deal with, I mean, we had the slightly depressing story of Fanon in his psychiatric ward in the first half and then the sor of the false dawn of Algerian independence, which turns out to be just as authoritarian as what preceded it, as predicted by Fanon. But we've now got the very jolly other side of the same picture. And I have to say this book here is one of the most amusing books I have read in the whole of doing the Empire podcast. It's by Elaine Moktefi, and it's called Algiers Third World Freedom fighters, Revolutionaries and Black Panthers. And it is a completely bonkers memoir.

[William Dalrymple]

Just a quick observation. Mocteffi wasn't born Mocteffi, was she? I mean, she was born. No, Elaine Klein, you know, a Jewish radical from New York. Yeah. I mean, that's who she is, but that's what she becomes. Anyway, on you go. Just wanted to make that little observation.

[Anita Anand]

And she's not alone. She's not the only New Yorker or American who will end up in Algiers at this period. And I have to say I had no conception of this. I knew about that, you know, having revolutionary movements, but I had no idea that. Well, we're about to meet all sorts of characters. Nina Simone, the father of LSD and the Black Panthers. So Elaine's memoir, which is just wonderful reading, she writes very well, brings this world the revolutionary glamour of Algiers. And Algiers, for those who haven't been there, is an incredibly glamorous city. It's a wonderful place to go. It's a bit like sort of being in Cass can, only a bit more Islamic.

[William Dalrymple]

Cannes smashed together with Marrakech. It's got that kind of vibe going on, doesn't it, really?

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, Cannes, Marrakech, and a little bit of sort of. Sort of revolutionary Tehran, somewhere between. It's got all these different sides to it, and it's still a fantastic place because you're walking on the Mediterranean. You've got all these corniche, you've got these glamorous buildings. And into this world at this period in the 1960s, all these guys turn up. Anita, tell us who's there.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, it's like a roll call of everybody who's going to give the CIA a headache, as far as I can see, because you've got the Vietcong, the anc, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the plo, the Polisario Front. All of these organizations have delegations of revolutionaries who are sort of milling about and basically swapping tips with each other.

[Anita Anand]

Have you heard about Semtex? It's really cool.

[William Dalrymple]

It sounds ridiculous and you can. You can sort of. But these things are really important, you know, to have these sort of counter or these revolutionaries altogether. They're not just comparing nodes. They're forming networks. And that's, you know, that's something that London also saw, I think, in the 1930s in particular. There was this one place in Muswell Hill, a house which, you know, all revolutionaries were welcome into. And it was sort of the Communists, it was the Gathers. Gandhi went in and came straight out because he thought it was just too rich for his palette, you know, and. And they start forming these brotherhoods.

[Anita Anand]

You have other moments that you. With sort of Geneva or that world of underwestern eyes. Conrad in the 19th century. You have these moments with all these revolutions, Vienna and another point in history, you know. But anyway, Algiers is definitely where it is in 1969. Tell us what happens there, because this is the moment when the festival, the Pan African festival of Algiers. Anita, tell us.

[William Dalrymple]

So, I mean, we should say that Pan Africanism is a relatively new movement and it has come into existence to unite the people of African descent worldwide. So 1969, over 5,000 people traveled to Algeria for what was known as Panaf, the Pan African Festival of Algiers. And again, I mean, you've got sort of this who's who of people who, you know, were just completely every colonial power's nightmare. So you have Amilcar Cabral. If you do postcolonial studies, you'll know the name because he, again, is one of those bedrocks of the study. And he is the kind of man who will stand up in a press conference and say that, and this is a direct quote. Christians make pilgrimages to the Vatican. Muslims go to Mecca. National liberation movements go to Algeria. You know, put that on the poster.

[Anita Anand]

But the more familiar ones is gonna be the American delegation who turn up. And you get Maya Angelou, the author of I Know why the Caged Bird sings. She comes. Nina Simone performs at the festival. She debuts her famous version of Nemesis. Pas neme kit PA naquit. PA ne kit pas. We all know that. Which she later puts into her album I Put a Spell on youn.

[William Dalrymple]

You've got a delegation from the Black Panthers. Not as serene as Nina Simone. Y the Black Panthers send a delegation as part of the festival. And you know the leader with the name that is always associated with the Black Panthers, Stokey Carmichael, a Trinidadian American who had been on the original Freedom Rider In 1961, Getting On Interstate buses to protest against segregation. He is now the man of black power, you know, inspired by Malcolm X. And he also washes up in Algiers. And Eldridge Cleaver as well, you know, this is the man who escaped to Cuba after fleeing an arrest warrant in the United States. After a police shootout, he too arrives in Algeria. So it is honestly a who's who. I mean, should be reminded that Cleaver was convicted of rape in 1958. Here is this nexus of people that's building up. That's the point.

[Anita Anand]

And then, as if that wasn't a rich enough cast list, along turns up Timothy Leary, the father of lsd. Now, his story is terrific. So he, for those who don't know the story, he's an American psychologist who teaches at Harvard and establishes the Harvard sort of LSD lab, the Psilocybin project. Is that how you pronounce it?

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, psilocybin. Yeah, exactly. But it's a tune in, drop out kind of movement, which is sort of take these psychedelics and you will have a much higher, higher plane of thinking.

[Anita Anand]

He's been had his life transformed by taking magic mushrooms in Mexico. And all he wants to do after that is experiment with hallucinogenics. And he reads Aldous Huxley, the Doors of Perception. And he goes all out with psychedelia. He is the father of psychedelia. And before long, Nixon is calling him the most dangerous man in America. But of course, to many counterculture hippies who are at Woodstock and so on, he is a complete icon. He's arrested with multiple drug offences, and finally, in 1970, he's put in prison in California for the possession of marijuana. This is the same sort of time as the Stones are being bussed in England on the same sort of. And the famous Mars Bar moment, he breaks out. He flees to Algeria and he seeks asylum there. Tell us what he does, Lita, once he gets to Algeria.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, so the Algerian government look at him go, hmm. Just not the kind of man who looks like he's leading any kind of revolution we recognize. But they do give him and his wife Rosemary sanctuary. And for several months, Leary lives it up in Algiers. And, you know, you've sort of got him sort of hippie dippy court where he is issuing communiques and the international press are coming and sitting by his soiled feet saying, tell us more, Timothy Leary, about how to free our minds and the rest will follow. And you've got sort of, you know, this image of a Harvard professor who is telling a whole generation, which is why, you know, he just gives the heebie jeebies to people like Nixon to just not accept the way things are. You know, tune in, turn on, drop out. Just don't accept what is here. And it's dangerous. These are all really subversive ideas. So the center of all subversion becomes Algiers.

[Anita Anand]

Now, this, of course, is not a city where there is complete freedom of speech, despite all the revolutionaries gathered in it. And there is a lot of very authoritarian stuff going on in the politics, despite all these people coming here as kind of center of liberation and freedom. And it's not long before Tim Leary and his wife fall out with the Black Panthers. And this is one of the crazier moments in this story. So the Black Panthers are operating out of Algiers, and Eldridge Cleaver, who deserves a biography of his own, and I'm looking forward to looking out for one, he does not approve of Leary's love of psychedelics. This is absolutely too wacky and hippie and not nearly disciplined enough for eldridge. And in 1971, the Panthers take a stand against Leary and the drug culture that they see him promoting. And here is a New York times article from February 1971. I'm just gonna read. Eldridge Cleaver says the Black Panthers are so incensed at the quote's madness of psychedelic culture that they have placed one of its leaders, Dr. Timothy Leary, under protective custody in his home in Algiers. I like protective custody. Cleaver, in a tape recorded message over the radio station kpfa, said Leary and his wife Rosemary were placed under quotes revolutionary arrest between January 9 and January 13, then released and placed under quotes Panther protection at their home. The couple arrived in Algiers last September, reclaimed their solidarity with the Panther movement. Dr. Leary had escaped from a prison in California where he'd been serving a sentence for the possession of marijuana. Cleaver, who fled the United States after violating parole, said in a message that psychedelic drugs were harmful to our cause and counter revolutionary. Anita.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, you know, you can understand where that, that thinking comes from, because the Black Panthers are all about, you know, black emancipation. And for them, they have seen, you know, black soldiers coming back from wars completely hooked on drugs, with their lives devastated and generational poverty that follows. And so, you know, they take a very strong stance. And, and so, you know, for them, this sort of rich little white boy who's preaching drugs is, of course, an anathema. The fact they think they can put him under house arrest in a country that doesn't belong to them, that's a different matter. I mean, it's completely bonkers, but. But it's what they do. So, you know, you've got Cleaver, who I think mistakenly believes Algeria belongs to him because the way he, you know, Puts somebody, Timothy Leary, under house arrest. He then, you know, toward, you know, from using Algeria as a base, these other socialist countries, and he calls it the US People's Anti Imperialist Delegation and sort of goes and gives speeches in countries including China, North Vietnam. I mean, his second child is actually born in North Korea, Willie. When his wife Kathleen and him were visiting Pyongyang.

[Anita Anand]

That's a jolly place to have a maternity hospital, I'm sure.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, you know, and he was considering North Korea. And this again, tells you much, I think, about, you know, all these hopes and aspirations of freedom and liberating from chains and. And yet for him, the model that North Korea was presenting in Pyongyang was for him a model for black American liberation as well. At the same time, and we're talking. We're talking about the 1970s here. Cleaver is also battling for the hearts, mind and leadership of the Black Panthers against a man called Huey Newton. Now, Newton beat him eventually, you know, and probably a lot of that was down to the fact that he was in the building. You know, Newton isn't in the United States. He's not in another country, and Cleaver is somewhere in Algiers. He really didn't think he would lose. Aldridge Cleaver did not think he would lose to Huey Newton. So he's dejected, depressed, and he moves to Paris with his family in 1973, where. Now, fasten your seatbelts, people. Eldridge Cleaver then reinvents himself as a clothing czar.

[Anita Anand]

He establishes a clothing line called Eldridge Cleaver Co. Designing trousers for men with a special penis pouch, stating in the press release that we've been castrated in clothing. Now, take that as you will. But anyway, he moves back to the US in 75, and inevitably, for a man who's shown such sort of varied politics, shall we say, he then abandons the Palestinian cause and embraces, briefly, Zionism, even hanging an Israeli flag outside of his Berkeley home. He then becomes a Mormon and later creates a religion which combines Christianity and Islam. Before, cherry on the cake, he joined as Republicans. I mean, can you.

[William Dalrymple]

Can anybody explain to me, Eldridge Cleaver answers on a postcard, please? Because it is like going to try anything, try anything at any point, once. But what this does, Willie, is it does. It does sort of, you know, going back to Algeria, which is this magnet for people, you know, like Cleaver and others, it's kind of, you know, look back to what Fanon was writing, you know, that this is going to feel Magnetic. But beware, because you have to heal the country first. This is a wounded country and a wounded psyche. Can we please not give it more oppression? But remember, we still got Boumedien in charge, the guy who is pulling the strings of the military who will not brook any kind of opposition or any form of democracy. So let's not make any bones about it. It's a one party state and you've got the secret police to enforce Bermudien's views.

[Anita Anand]

No free press.

[William Dalrymple]

No free press, exactly. You know, habeas corpus suspended at the drop of her hat, you know, so that is the country that is, is on the surface of it, this beacon of, of anti colonialism inside. People know better off really. And you had a worker self management program that began in the early years of independence. You know, it was a really audacious experiment in democratic socialism in a post colonial world. You know, Algerian workers running the farms, running the factories that the Europeans had abandoned when they ran away. And they were meant to run it for themselves, you know, like a collective for their, in their own interests. All of that gets dismantled and it's all run by the state, A state controlled by a man who does not brook opposition or question boomediyeh.

[Anita Anand]

Now the other crucial factor at this time, for what will follow a little later in the 80s and 90s, is that the Islamic religious establishment is also excluded now. They provided a moral backbone of the resistance, as we saw in our last episode. There's a lot of calling for minarets to rise up and, and the ulema play a major role in the Algerian revolution, but they are marginalized and controlled at this period. This stokes up resentments that will explode in the Islamist revolutions, plural, which plague Algeria more recently and which we're just coming out of now. That period when I visited Algeria four years ago, it was just after the last sort of revolutionary Islamist movements had been, had been put down and excluded. But there's also something else going on which is that the oil revenues which could have provided a genuine transformation of Algerian, Saudi. These guys have got huge fortunes in oil under their sand. This is a major opportunity to completely change the way that the very poor rural bit of Algeria which has been left out of the French prosperity in this country. And you have a real opportunity of a country which has oil revenues, which has fertile soil, which has everything going for it in a way. Great potential for tourism. There's so many ways in which Algeria should and could be flourishing at this moment and instead it's channeled into sort of Stalinist prestige industrial projects, just like we saw in our Mao series. Steel mills, petrochemicals, big sort of shiny factories producing steel. And this very much over things like education, housing and healthcare for ordinary Algerians, which is the sort of thing that could actually raise their living standards. And at the end of it, the wretched of the earth, as Fanon put it, are still wretched. They had different masters with different complexions, but they're really no better off.

[William Dalrymple]

While all of this is happening, really, we've taken our eyes off really, that the, the seed of the whole anti colonial movement, the Pied Noirs, remember the Pinoires, the Blackfeet, those French who came and settled in Algeria and suddenly have better treatment, better conditions than Algerians in their own country. Well, you know, over a million of them are still in Algeria and this is a moment where they're going to make a really big decision and they've got, they've got a slogan, Willie, that sort of sums up the choice that they're facing in 1930.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, this is La valise aux le sa coe. Are we going to have the suitcase or the coffin? Are we going to leave or are we going to stay and die? And of course it's not a choice because no one's going to opt for the coffin if they've got the choice. So what you find is that despite the promises which have been made all along, that anyone French who wants to stay and who renounces French citizenship and stays at an Algerian can do so in peace. This goes out the window because there are endless revenge killings, both of Europeans and the Algerians who've collaborated with the French. There's just too many people that have been tortured, too many people that have had their lives broken and there's too much hatred. So very, very quickly, 1 million French leave Algeria, along with a large number of the hakis, the collaborators, as they're now thought of, who had fought loyally, as they thought, for the French regime. And these guys, in a matter of weeks, not months, a million people leave Algeria. They come into France on ships, on planes. Some of them have managed to get some money out, others are arriving with just a suitcase or even just the clothes on their back. And they've been dispossessed, effectively, of vineyards, beautiful estate houses, or just little businesses on the edge of Algiers because many of them are poor whites. They go back to France and they are not greeted warmly. They're greeted with suspicion and condescension and this sort of inability to acknowledge what has actually been lost and they settle very much together in the south, which has obviously the same sort of climate as what they've left behind in Algeria. They don't want to live up in Atlantic France. They want to be on the Mediterranean. So they settle in Marseille, Toulon, Montpellier, Nice. And politically, they bring their rage and their now hatred of Algerian Muslims with them.

[William Dalrymple]

Right. And I just wanted to say something more about the, the hakis, because I think they're fascinating and people don't really talk about them very much. Okay, so. So these are, again, just to reiterate, the Algerians who fought on the side of. Of France, and there are roughly about 200, 000 of of these Hakis who serve as auxiliary troops for the French military. They are interpreters, they're civil guards. You know, they're. They're the glue that holds it all together. And this really does remind me a lot of, you know, what happened in Afghanistan with translators and, you know, sort of the police who work side by side with British and American troops, that all of a sudden, when the British and American decide to leave, what happens to them? Well, they may try and go with them, but are they greeted with open arms? Well, in France they certainly won't. The hakis found that even though they had risked their lives actually and torched any chance of going back to homes that they had known for generations, there's not much love for them. And particularly when you've got all this anger and desperation, as Willie was describing, from the Pied noirs who've been forced to leave with just what they can carry. You know, they are brown faces that are identifiable brown faces. So you've got this really mad situation where harquis who have lost everything because they were loyal to the French and end up in France and end up being treated very shabbily by French who had also sort of faced the same dispossession and come out. So it's kind of a bonkers situation.

[Anita Anand]

The Z orders given not to evacuate them. The French are very keen to cut them loose from the beginning. And there are documented cases of French officers explicitly been given orders to leave their collaborating haki units behind. And of course, the FLN massacres them in thousands after independence. They're shot, they're tortured, in some cases they're burnt alive. It's a horror story. Well, this is very interesting. Anyone that wants to know more about this in our bonus episode, join the club. Because my wonderful friend Farah Monjour, who grew up in this world in the banlieue on the outskirts of Paris. And she said that two and a half generations later, or three generations later in some cases, she grew up in a world where every Algerian knows whether which families are hakis and which ones were part of the revolution. She said that in her class, you know, it didn't matter that you made friends from both sides of this divide within the Algerian community, because the Algerians are now so thrown together by the racism that they suffer and they're living together, they're intermarrying. You know, there are marriages between Haki families and resistance families, but everyone knows it's like being Protestant or Catholic or something 50 years ago.

[William Dalrymple]

A more contemporary example is Iranians who came to London. You know, you sort of had two waves of Iranians. You had those who were for the Shah who left when the Ayatollah gained power, and they end up in London. And then you have the ones, the intellectuals who are persecuted by the Ayatollah and his secret police, who also come up. So you have these cafes, which are the only cafes that serve, you know, Persian food, Iranian food. And at first you're sort of divided down the middle in these two camps, both eating the same food and then very much mixed together. But everybody knows, even to this generation, who comes from which camp, you know, who's forebears did what I should say, actually, you know, it's even worse for them immediately, the Huckies, when they come, come to France because they're put in internment camps. Let's just describe what happens to them as soon as they come back again. These are the ones who've served, the ones who were loyal. And there are internment camps set up in the forests around Lozerre and in the Ardeche. And, you know, they're not lovely at all. They are primitive conditions that they are housed in. And this persists into the 1970s. So you've got children growing up with this knowledge that they were penned for their loyalty. So just, just imagine that all this, these are the ingredients for anger and these are the ingredients for dispossession. And we're going to talk a bit more about that next time.

[Anita Anand]

There are many things I love about this series, many things I learned reading around for it, but. But it is still a completely live issue in France. This is not 1960s stuff, as old and as passe as Timothy Leary and his LSD hallucinogenics. This is absolutely contemporary because in the forthcoming French election, Marine Le Pen is going to be standing on behalf of the party which is basically established by her father in the aftermath of the Pied Noire having to flee Algeria, and that dark shadow absolutely hangs over the next election in France. It's not just a part of history, it is determining the Future if you want to hear that bonus episode with Farah Manjour which I talked about, and I have to say it's one of my favorite bonus episodes. She is fabulous and we don't often have episodes in in this podcast which feel as contemporary as this issue is and which are determining not just the present but the future. Please join our club. It's not often me that gets to say this. It's usually Anita's wheeze to promote the club. But you are missing out if you're not a member because we often save some really, really interesting and slightly offbeat stuff for the club, and Farah's interview is definitely part of it. So if you want early access, add free episodes and and bonus episodes. Join the Empire Club at empirepoduk. Com.

[William Dalrymple]

Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand, and goodbye

[Anita Anand]

from me, William Durample.