Sartre's unfaltering support of anti-colonial movements, and his fearless condemnation of state sanctioned violence, have never been more prescient. Meanwhile, Camus' position during the Algerian war of independence should serve as a reminder that calls for truce too often overlook the force exerted by socially dominant groups to preserve the status quo, writes Oliver Gloag.

(Click here to read Ron Aronson arguing that Sartre and Camus' positions have been united in the recent protest movement.)

The outrage and anger at the filmed murder of George Floyd at the end of May, 2020 at the hands of the police ignited a movement that brought together a multitude of people from all races, social classes and nationalities in the streets of nearly every city in the United States - as well as major cities in England, Germany and France. The notion of formerly separate people becoming “groups in fusion,” which come together united by a desire for radical social change, was first theorized by Jean-Paul Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) – a radical re-adaptation of Marxism in the context of global anti-imperialist struggles of the post-war period. Sixty years later, it is more relevant than ever.

But that is not the only echo of Sartre’s ideas and commitments that can be heard today: with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ensuing popular mobilization against police violence and discrimination, it is worthwhile to recall that Sartre's commitment to black liberation across the globe and to the struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism was unyielding from the moment he travelled to the United States right before the end of World War II. This was no accident.

As Camus would write later in The Rebel, revolt was to remain the exclusive purview of Europeans.

In January of 1945, Sartre visited the USA for a 4-month trip sponsored by the U.S. State Department to promote the Franco-American alliance.  Its purpose was propaganda.  Sartre did not play along. With what would become his trademark caustic irony, Sartre denounced the injustices he saw: “In this country, rightly proud of its democratic institutions, 10% of the population is deprived of their political rights, in this country there are 13 million untouchables.  They serve you food, shine your shoes, operate your elevators, carry your luggage, but they do not interact with you, nor you with them: they interact with elevators, luggage, shoes; they perform tasks, like machines.  They call themselves “third class citizens”.  Sartre would go on to write a play, The Respectful Prostitute, set in Alabama, based on the Scottsboro trials. It was a powerful denunciation of Jim Crow.  Needless to say, the play was not well received by mainstream US critics at the time.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in May 1945, France was simultaneously celebrating the end of the war in Europe and starting new ones in Africa.