Using French against them forced the occupiers to see their own signs as relative

Evidence

The French authorities were curiously baffled by this phenomenon. They first saw in it the proof of what they had always claimed—i.e., the incapacity of the Arabic language to handle the operational concepts of a modern revolutionary war. But at the same time, the decisions reached in the occupier’s linguistic system forced the occupier to realize the relative character of his signs and created confusion and disorder in his defense system. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 313

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Algerian Muslims turned de Gaulle’s own slogan against French authorities.; Integrationists cast French as the ordering Logos over colonized anarchy; Louverture seized France’s language of difference to build his own regime

Related

• Algerian Muslims turned de Gaulle’s own slogan against French authorities. (similarity 0.85)
• French language and emotional ties lingered in post-independence Algeria (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Louverture seized France’s language of difference to build his own regime #corroborates (0.60)
• Integrationists cast French as the ordering Logos over colonized anarchy #complicates (0.55)