ABC News Discovers 'Gangs' in Haiti, Forgetting American Origin Story
ABC News dutifully reports on gangs launching “large-scale attacks” in Haiti, with “hundreds flee[ing] gunfire and burning homes.” It’s a tragedy, to be sure. What this reporting meticulously avoids, however, is any inconvenient historical context. Like the fact that the US has a long, storied tradition of destabilizing Haiti, from the 2004 coup that ousted democratically elected President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide (a coup aided by the US and France) to buttressing corrupt regimes ever since. These 'gangs' didn't just materialize from thin air; their power vacuum was engineered, often for external interests seeking pliable leadership and resources. One might wonder why the US, so quick to condemn 'ungoverned spaces' abroad, consistently helps create them. Perhaps it's easier to decry
chaos than to acknowledge decades of 'democracy-promotion' that paved the way for it. When will a major network connect these dots, or are we just supposed to marvel at the spontaneous combustion of nations?