Pat 'Knobhead' Robertson does it again

Hard on the heels of a previous post poking fun at the idiocies of the organised, evangelical Christian Far Right in Ireland, Leftfield brings you news of another bout of idiocy from a fundamentalist nutjob.

Calling out the offensive madness of Pat Robertson is a bit like shooting fish in a giant barrel with a satellite laser guided super gun, i.e. it’s not very hard. Researching this article I came across the wikipedia page ‘Pat Robertson controversies,’ which has 20 separate entries, such as ‘Chinese abortions,’ ‘Remarks against Muslims and Hindus,’ ‘Remarks against Asians,’ and ‘Financial Ties to Charles Taylor and Mobutu Sese Seko.’* He also famously called Scotland “a dark land overrun with homosexuals,” and advocated the assassination of Hugo Chavez on live TV.

If you don’t know of this guy count yourself very, very lucky you live in a country where such people don’t have national political influence. People in the US are much less fortunate. Robertson is a famous televangelist, known for spouting his virulent right wing views on his own TV station, the Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1988 he campaigned to become the Republican nominee for US President, and retains a huge following and influence on the US right. He’s really a poster boy for the extreme right evangelical political movement that is basically responsible for two terms of George W. Bush.

But what has he done lately to earn the prestigious inclusion in Leftfield’s roster of knobheads? Well, he excelled himself with this latest outburst, in reference to the Richter 7.0 earthquake in Haiti which has killed around 200, 000 people:

Pat Robertson on Haitian quake

… something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the French, true story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic something good may come. But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable.

Most people who can be bothered to try and work out what is going on in his fevered mind interpret his comments as relating to the role of Dutty Boukman, a slave in colonial Haiti when the country was still controlled by the French. As a priest of the voudun religion, followed by slaves and derived from their traditional beliefs before they were abducted from Africa, he conducted a ceremony in 1791 that helped spark the Haitian revolution.

The movement he helped start is one of the forgotten moments in the long struggle of humans everywhere to free themselves from exploitation, not as well known as the French or Russian revolutions. It was the first successful slave revolt in the history of the Atlantic slave trade, and it allowed Haitians to found the first state not controlled by a white elite in the whole western hemisphere, and the first post-colonial Black-led state in the world. The revolutionaries, in an unabated streak of ass-kicking, not only beat the French, but then went on to drive out the Spanish and British invaders who saw their chance to grab another colony. Then, with racism clearly clouding his ability to recognise hardcore fighters when he saw them, Napoleon Bonaparte sent MORE French troops in an attempt to reconquer the island. I bet you can guess what happened to them.

The existence of Haiti as a revolutionary base later became a key aid to the struggle of Simon Bolivar to end Spanish colonial domination of Latin America, when Haitians provided the rebels with shelter and aid.

The history of the revolution is famously documented in the classic book ‘The Black Jacobins,’ by Caribbean Marxist C. L. R. James. It’s a great read and is one every socialist should try and make the time for at some point.

On one level, you can almost (almost) understand how poor old mad, ignorant Robertson ended up with such wacky views, given the total lack of context that’s been displayed in most coverage of the devastating quake. Most accounts have told us how the infrastructure and government were woefully inadequate, and how unprepared they were for a disaster of this kind. But that’s the end of the story, nobody seems to be interested in how this situation arose.

The fact of the matter is that there is almost never a completely natural disaster, especially in countries like Haiti, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Since the revolution Haiti has been under virtually constant assault from imperialism. In 1825 France sent another invasion force, and forced the former slaves to pay reparations for the cost of their freedom, a crippling debt for Haitians. This was the beginning of an almost permanent period of political uncertainty, in a country that has had 32 coups in its 200 year history, virtually all of them backed by foreign imperial powers.

This process came to a head in 1914 when British, German and American troops entered the island to prevent rebellion. The US then went on to occupy the island until 1934, completely re-writing the constitution and imposing a financial system that left Haiti in even more debt, and siphoned off the country’s wealth to US banks.

Another little mentioned event is how the US helped establish a firm boundary between Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Following this, in 1937, the US trained and supported Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo massacred around 30, 000 Haitians in five days on his side of the border.

Following the US occupation the US supported with significant aid the dictatorship of the batshit-insane ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier as a bulwark against a spread of the Cuban revolution. Duvalier was notable for a reign of terror against anyone he didn’t like, including socialists and communists, carried out by his private army, the Tonton Macoutes. Haiti became his private kingdom, and he continued loot the country’s wealth, as well as getting Haiti into massive debt. Haiti today is still paying off debts amassed by Duvalier, which no one had any say on apart from ‘Papa.’ He created a huge personality cult around himself, and claimed that President Kennedy had been assassinated because he had cursed him. He also liked to compare himself to Christ. In other words, he had about as much of a grip on reality as Pat Robertson. When he died in 1971 he was succeeded by his son, known, imaginatively enough, as ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier.

In 1986 Haitians finally managed to get the Duvalier family kicked out and exiled to France. Following this Haiti held its first democratic elections in a long long time, and elected former priest Jean Bertrand Aristide to the Presidency. As a priest he had advocated liberation theology, and as leader of the party Lavalas (which means ‘the flood’ in Haitian creole) he argued for redistribution of wealth and the duty of the state to try and alleviate the massive poverty affecting Haitians. In 1994 he also suffered a coup against his Presidency, but it was defeated and he returned.

Re-elected in 2000, Aristide was finally deposed in a US backed coup, the frontline troops of which were drug-smuggling mercenaries. US troops then kidnapped Aristide and dumped him in the Central African Republic. Since then Haiti has hosted a UN “peacekeeping” force, whose troops have been predictably enough been accused of numerous killings and abuses of the Haitian people. One of the most notable crimes to have occurred during the UN occupation has been the kidnapping of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine. Lovinsky was a member of Lavalas, and a noted human rights activist who fought for the poorest, particularly single mothers and homeless children. He went missing after a meeting with UN forces in 2007. An international solidarity campaign has fought for his return.

In the first elections since the coup, Haitians overwhelmingly elected Rene Preval, a close ally of Aristide. Despite government committed to (as Aristide put it) “moving from absolute misery to dignified poverty,” Haiti has been the victim of decades of neo-liberal capitalist policies. International institutions like the IMF and World Bank forced the government to relinquish its powers to help their own people from the 70s onwards, and harsh trade agreements made sure the prospect of Haiti developing its economy and resources for its own people was just not happening.

Perhaps most importantly, these policies deliberately forced tens of thousands of poor small farmers off their land and into swelling slums in cities like the capital Port Au Prince. This city has grown immensely, and the vast majority live in poorly built makeshift homes that are in no way equipped to cope with disaster conditions, with no electricity, running water or infrastructure of any kind. Around 75% of the population lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% — four and a half million people — live on less than $1 per day. These are the people who have died in the thousands, as much victims of poverty imposed by imperialism as the earthquake.

As Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, puts it: “Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.”

The UN occupation is fantastically expensive, and yet its mission is defined as solely military, in other words keeping the rebellious Haitians in line. The powers that take part, chief among them the US, have consistently voted against any of this money being diverted to help ordinary Haitians.

An important comparison to make if you want to understand what’s happened to Haiti is with neighbouring Cuba, fortunate to have had a socialist revolution in 1959 and so not controlled by the US and its allies. In 2008 storms killed thousands in Haiti, whereas in Cuba they killed only four. A socialist government that is truly in control of the country and its resources is able to take practical steps to protect ordinary people from natural disasters. Meanwhile, refugees leaving Cuba are welcomed with open arms in the US as evidence of how awful socialism is, whilst Haitians fleeing poverty are treated as vermin, kept in detention camps and deported wholesale back to Haiti.

Many places and organisations are raising money for disaster relief in Haiti, and this is of course vitally needed. But socialists reading this could perhaps reflect on how we could best help the Haitians in the long term. What Haiti really needs is imperialism to get off their back so that they can have the kind of pro-poor government that they have consistently voted for. One of the main ways this could happen is if the US and international bodies would forgive some of the huge debt burden, much of which was amassed by a government no Haitian ever voted for. But in fact, quite the opposite is happening right now, as the IMF is actually ADDING to Haiti’s external debt by offering loans for disaster relief!

Perhaps some of this (plus a basic education about geology, and the devil’s non-role in it) could help enlighten Pat Robertson. But then again, it’s unlikely, as he is clearly a knobhead. Inside that knobhead is a brain composed of nothing but 100% pure, weapons grade mentalism.

Bonus: Pat Robertson gets caught saying a caller to the Larry King show is a “homo” when he thinks he’s off air:

Pat Robertson calls viewer a “homo”

*Charles Taylor is the former President of Liberia, currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague, who presided over a reign of terror in his country featuring all kinds of horrors inflicted by conscripted child soldiers. Mobutu Sese Seko was the brutal dictator of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which he renamed Zaire cos he felt like it. When he was kicked out the aftermath caused a war which has killed more people than World War 1. Pat Robertson was in business with them both because he owns diamond mines that use virtual slave labour. What a prick.