Algeria, Antifascism, and Third Worldism: An Anticolonial Genealogy of the Western European New Left (Algeria, France, Italy, 1957–1975)

Abstract

This article explores the hypothesis that the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) occupies a core position in the genealogy of the New Left, having set the political and conceptual framework–namely the ‘global civil war’–by which the victory of Castro and Guevara or the triumph of the Vietcong would later be understood. The aim is to set out fresh approaches to understanding the emergence of the New Left as a complex process encompassing local, national and transnational dynamics; a process shaped by, but also shaping, decolonisation. The goal is to contribute–at least–to complicating the Western narrative of the global 1960s, by shifting the focus from Berkeley and Paris to Algiers. In this sense, it is useful to look at the anticolonial networks in and among Italy, France, and of course Algeria. The periodisation, necessarily loose, takes as terminus post quem the ‘Battle of Algiers’ (1957) and as terminus ad quem the fall/liberation of Saigon (1975): for the transnational public of the New Left, the first marks a short circuit between the Algerian War and the memory of the Resistance and the Second World War, while the second marks the end of Third Worldism as a political project.