Posted on February 14, 2018

‘Vodou’ Rituals Target Children

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, February 13, 2018

Boston was once the center of American Puritanism, a metropolis founded by flinty descendants of Pilgrim Fathers. Today, it plays host to a community that brutalizes children in the name of a “religion” many regard as devil worship, but in the eyes of the media, it’s the “backlash,” not the violence, that is to be feared.

According to police, a woman named Latasha Sanders recently murdered her two sons, ages eight and five, as part of a Vodou ritual. (“Vodou” is the preferred spelling, by the way, for what goes on in Haiti. This is to distinguish it from Louisiana Voodoo, which is slightly different, and is supposed to cleanse the word of the “negative connotations” of “voodoo.”) Latasha’s mother claims Miss Sanders was obsessed with the Illuminati and believed that human sacrifice could improve her status.

This was not the only Vodou-driven abuse of children in Massachusetts in recent days. Two women, both of Haitian descent, are charged with giving third-degree burns to a five-year-old girl and threatening to cut off her eight-year-old brother’s head with a machete. One of the women claims she had previously performed the ritual successfully for friends.

The media are usually driven by clickbait and sensationalism, eager to promote the most spectacular interpretation of any event. But rather than investigating an almost Lovecraftian cult operating in Cotton Mather’s old home town, journalists are lecturing Americans, telling them not to get any prejudiced ideas.

The Associated Press fretted over a backlash and quoted Maude Evans, identified as a “Vodou priestess” in Boston. She claimed to be “really concerned” Vodou would be targeted and that unidentified people “will do things and blame it on Vodou.” The authors of the article, Alanna Durkin Richer and Philip Marcelo, both denounce “racism” on their Twitter feeds, which is a contrast to their sanguine attitude towards Vodou violence. The article was widely reprinted, by Fox News, Yahoo News, and local outlets, thus establishing the dominant narrative for the event. Papers such as the Boston Herald are also rushing out articles informing its readers that Vodou not only is opposed to violence, but prohibits anyone to “think negative of people” or even of the animals that priests sacrifice. This commandment is evidently not being followed by some practitioners. A few years ago, a Haitian immigrant drunk driver threatened a white state trooper (and all whites) with a curse that would kill them all.

Vodou priests seem to be prone to abuses. In 2015, a supposed priest in South Florida was arrested for raping a girl, allegedly in an attempt to cleanse her of “evil spirits.” Even in a puff piece about Vodou in 2011, the New York Times mentioned two recent local cases, one in which a ritual caused a fire that killed an elderly woman, and another that burned a six-year-old girl. Still, the Times praised Vodou as a “spiritual anchor” and source of “empowerment,” and quoted practitioners who denounced the religion’s “demonization” after various crimes were brought to light.

As more Haitians move to major cities, the religion is having an impact. Parks in New York City are becoming centers for animal sacrifice, where pedestrians have found goat heads, butchered pigs, and scores of mutilated chickens. The Inquisitr seems to justify outdoor sacrifice by calling parks “the sacred grounds of black magic.”

Attempts by reporters to warn against a nonexistent “backlash” have become a staple of American journalism, especially when it comes to Muslim terrorism. As some conservative pundits have joked, some day we can probably expect a headline like, “Muslims Fear Backlash from Tomorrow’s Terrorist Attack.” September 11 has become an annual opportunity for the media to run stories about how Muslims fear pogroms against Mohammedans, with supposedly serious journalists warning that people might “stare” at Muslims. Nothing ever happens of course, and the anti-Muslim “hate crimes” the press report seem to be mostly invented.

Now, Vodou appears to have moved into the category of a protected religion — like Islam. Haiti’s “distinctly African-based spirituality” is an ideal framework for scholarly articles and books that denounce “colonialist” whites for “scapegoating” the faith. Vodou is also championed by the press and by universities as a kind of spiritual framework for movements such as Black Lives Matter. President Trump’s alleged “sh*thole” comment about Haiti have given Vodou a kind of #Resistance chic. An upcoming fashion show in New York City will include a Vodou ritual to protest the President. Haiti’s genocidal war of independence was begun with a Vodou ritual and animal sacrifice, so the links between Vodou and anti-white activity go back a long way.

Voodoo ceremony. (Credit Image: © Pascal Deloche/DPA via ZUMA Press)

Vodou “exorcisms” can be dangerous, and the media’s relative indifference to the victimization of children is startling. In Europe, the refusal of authorities to interfere with the religious practices of immigrants has already led to deaths, but there have been no calls for investigations. In contrast, the problem of sexual abuse among the Amish has been a media target for more than a decade, with outlets such as the Huffington Post warning darkly of the “Rape Culture” of the Plain People.

No religious group is without its dark side, but it is hard to believe Vodou would get mainstream respect if it were not Haitian. It is hard to imagine the press reporting calmly on any white religious group that slaughtered animals in public parks and left the heads and bones for passersby to see.

Ultimately, religion reflects the roots of a people. Both Mexicans and Frenchmen may be “Catholic,” but they practice their religion in different ways. Outsiders also respond to the race of the people who practice a faith, as much as to the tenets of the faith. Liberals mock the modesty of white Christians but respect Muslims who wear the hijab. And now, we have another example: Vodou.

Haitians, unlike European-Americans, have a homeland. They and their dark rituals should stay there.