Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 2: Special Whoops All Context edition, because we are on part
Speaker 2: four of our four parter and we're finally about to
Speaker 2: get to the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 3: Whoops All Context harr Your.
Speaker 2: Host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is problem.
Speaker 4: We are the only people on cool Zone that really
Speaker 4: appreciates that reference.
Speaker 2: I actually can't even remember what it is, but I
Speaker 2: was thinking. I was like, I think this dates.
Speaker 3: It's from the cereal. It's it's Lucky Charms.
Speaker 2: Oh shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when they did the whoops all Marshmallows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about it before I record. I
Speaker 2: was like, why is this a thing in my head?
Speaker 2: I think no one younger than me has this in
Speaker 2: their head exactly.
Speaker 4: That's why I was like, we're the only ones that
Speaker 4: appreciate it. That was when they did the all marshmallows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how is that cereal? Number one?
Speaker 2: But yeah, I would try it once. That's what I
Speaker 2: would do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did to obtaining away in the world. My
Speaker 4: black Mama would have bought any way in the world.
Speaker 3: She put that for us.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't get Lucky Charms as a kid, No,
Speaker 2: not at all. Yeah, my mom would take honey nut
Speaker 2: cheerios and regular cheerios and put them in a tupperware
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty so I could have like almost honey nut.
Speaker 4: Your mom and my mom were clearly best friends. Yeah,
Speaker 4: clearly best friends. Yeah, they read the same book apparely. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, that's probably about as much sugar as I
Speaker 2: should have in my cereal off exactly.
Speaker 3: It's that's the truth.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, we don't have a producer today, but I
Speaker 2: mean we do actually have a producer, just not on Mike.
Speaker 2: Our producer is Sophie Yeah. Our audio engineers Rory Hi
Speaker 2: Rory Yeah. And our theme music was written for us
Speaker 2: by on Women. And we are on part four of
Speaker 2: the Haitian Revolution, the part with the revolution in it.
Speaker 2: The more I read about the Haitian Revolution, the more
Speaker 2: I realize I will never know everything about the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 2: Anyone could easily dedicate their entire career to understanding it.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: On my shelf, I've got at least two books that
Speaker 2: I've barely touched on the subject. Like I started skimming
Speaker 2: them and being like this isn't I don't know time?
Speaker 2: When is the Haitian Revolution's influence on the intellectual tradition
Speaker 2: of the West. It's like sheesh, I know, right, but
Speaker 2: it's actually one of the books that like did a
Speaker 2: good job of Like I've read some of it. It
Speaker 2: it broke down the like, hey, this wasn't enlightenedment came
Speaker 2: to enslaved people Haiti and the Haitian Revolution exported ideas
Speaker 2: of what liberty means, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Good.
Speaker 2: And then another one that I didn't get to touch
Speaker 2: at all is literally just how it compares to Cuba.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, there's so much. That's
Speaker 2: the thing about trying to learn history. Yeah, it's infinite.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything is everything that already happened. Yeah, as has
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: And why you're learning it more of it happens while
Speaker 2: we're here.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Then you learn more about like some of the books
Speaker 2: that like change the way that everyone thinks about the
Speaker 2: Haitian Revolution came out in twenty twenty three, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: like yeah, and all this histories argued about. I don't
Speaker 2: feel one hundred percent certain about the parts that I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about, but it is the best that
Speaker 2: I was able to come up with on August fourteenth,
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety one, there was a meeting in the woods.
Speaker 2: For years, decades and centuries, and slave people on the
Speaker 2: island as well as maroons, had been building these communication
Speaker 2: networks that were robust and powerful, and they were waiting
Speaker 2: for a purpose. I mean they had a purpose. They
Speaker 2: were used for marooning and all kinds of things. But
Speaker 2: it's almost like they spent hundreds of years building this thing,
Speaker 2: and then it got to work. The French Revolution, the
Speaker 2: labor strikes, the increasing repression by the white supremacists, the
Speaker 2: sudden interest in revolution from the free people of color
Speaker 2: all came together to give the communication networks this purpose.
Speaker 2: And so the first meeting probably was in the woods
Speaker 2: the Lenhment de Meisee sugar plantation two hundred. Whenever I
Speaker 2: pronounce French, I just start dropping letters and hope for
Speaker 2: the best. Good to me, Yeah, thank you, yeah, thank
Speaker 2: you yeah. And I spent a month in France. Once
Speaker 2: I clearly know, oh you got it. Then how to
Speaker 2: order bag attes, that's all I learned. How to do jesuit, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all I got. So woplay. Yeah, I can say
Speaker 2: a bag at please, and I don't speak French there
Speaker 2: it is everyone there loved me. People in France not
Speaker 2: like it. But you don't speak French.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a couple of languages that like I'm
Speaker 4: not saying words, but I feel like I can.
Speaker 3: I could do the accent.
Speaker 4: Well, Like that's like a bit with like Conan O'Brien
Speaker 4: where it's like he doesn't speak German, but he sounds
Speaker 4: like he does.
Speaker 3: So like for me, that's French where I'm just like.
Speaker 4: Jesu of Ecal, Like I'm like, yeah, say anything, it
Speaker 4: just sounds French.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I I've learned about ten words in every language where
Speaker 2: I've been in the country of you know, I learned
Speaker 2: how to say like I don't speak this language, hello, goodbye,
Speaker 2: thank you, fuck off?
Speaker 3: Yeah, beer beer yep.
Speaker 2: But all these people came together in the woods at
Speaker 2: the sugar plantation. Two hundred drivers and other skilled enslaved
Speaker 2: workers gathered together, and they all together represented thousands of people.
Speaker 2: This is a spokes council, which is one of the
Speaker 2: most important pieces of communication technology and existence. Disparate people
Speaker 2: can come together to talk about shit and get things
Speaker 2: done by each group sending a spokesperson to the spokes council, okay,
Speaker 2: and so they got together and they were like, well,
Speaker 2: we should have a revolution. And then they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we should have a revolution.
Speaker 3: We should go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2: At this meeting, someone announced that the king had given
Speaker 2: enslaved people three days off a week, but the owners
Speaker 2: were hiding that and.
Speaker 3: This isn't true, but it okay.
Speaker 2: One, it's not the first time on this show that
Speaker 2: even recently that we've talked about enslave people using rumors
Speaker 2: of like, well, the king wouldn't allow this in order
Speaker 2: to spur people into action, what are.
Speaker 3: You gonna call him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. And also it's like the specifics aren't true,
Speaker 2: but the idea that the king is actually kind of
Speaker 2: trying to be like a little bit more moderate towards
Speaker 2: the enslaved people, and then the owners aren't allowing it,
Speaker 2: that part is true. Yes, it is, yeah, And so
Speaker 2: they announced the revolution and word spreads across the entire
Speaker 2: north of the country. The little we know about this
Speaker 2: first meeting comes from the confessions of one of the
Speaker 2: captured revolutionaries, because there was this eighteen year old driver
Speaker 2: and he was like, all right, the revolution's on and
Speaker 2: he's eighteen. So he just goes and says fire to
Speaker 2: a plantation.
Speaker 3: Uh, were good, We're good. Yeah, Oh, we're good. It's
Speaker 3: time okay cool? Yeah yeah, and uh sorry, I didn't
Speaker 3: hear you. What'd you say? Oh it's already burned now yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he gets caught and he confesses, and
Speaker 2: that's how we know in the historical record about this meeting.
Speaker 2: A couple days after that, a free black man who
Speaker 2: was a veteran of the Oji rebellion when the rich
Speaker 2: people who happen to be people of color all got attacked. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy leads a revolt at a sugar estate that recently
Speaker 2: had a strike, because these networks that came out of
Speaker 2: strikes were a huge part of it. And the plan
Speaker 2: that they came up with was three guys with knives
Speaker 2: are going to go kill the manager. But they failed,
Speaker 2: and so these first two sparks that the revolution tried
Speaker 2: to cast out didn't catch. But that's what happens when
Speaker 2: you try and start fires with sparks. Yeah, just got
Speaker 2: to keep going. So they do on August twenty first,
Speaker 2: or the twenty fourth, or the fourteenth, or not at all,
Speaker 2: depending on your source. Yes, there's so many versions where
Speaker 2: like there was only one meeting, there was zero meetings.
Speaker 2: I've become a believer in the two meeting theory of
Speaker 2: the Haitian Revolution over the past two weeks of reading
Speaker 2: about this constantly.
Speaker 4: Well, the T shirts say twenty fourth, that's what the
Speaker 4: T shirts say. But oh, interesting, it's just a T shirt.
Speaker 3: Yeah I know that.
Speaker 2: Oh huh, all right, but what do they know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: at some point you have the second meeting, and this
Speaker 2: is the meeting that goes down in history. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: the more famous meeting in the woods, the one that
Speaker 2: really got shit going. I've seen framed or the first
Speaker 2: meeting was the meeting of the leaders and the next
Speaker 2: one was the rallying of the troops. But I think
Speaker 2: that this is coming a little bit from a bias,
Speaker 2: from someone believing that everything is like hierarchically organized. I
Speaker 2: think it was a planning spokes council and then a
Speaker 2: rallying of the troops. But the leaders are at both
Speaker 2: in the eighteen year old wasn't a leader, he was
Speaker 2: anyway whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The second meeting was more famous because it's a ceremony
Speaker 2: and it was coole as shit. It was at a
Speaker 2: place that is now famous blas Kma Alligator Woods. The
Speaker 2: revolutionaries forgot to do a roll call, and they didn't
Speaker 2: keep detailed minutes of these meetings and ceremonies, and so
Speaker 2: they've become folkloric.
Speaker 3: So did the meeting even happen?
Speaker 4: I know, anybody's second was aired? Did we have an
Speaker 4: open floor discussion?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And most people agree that two people led this ceremony.
Speaker 2: There was a male priest, a Hungen, which is named
Speaker 2: for a male priest in Vodu. Yeah, name Bookman Duddy.
Speaker 2: And there was a female priest, a mambo named Cecil Fatima.
Speaker 2: And we'll start with Bookman. I've read that he was
Speaker 2: born in Jamaica, and I've read that he was born
Speaker 2: free in what was called then Senegambia in Africa, and
Speaker 2: then he was transported to Jamaica. I don't know. He
Speaker 2: was likely a Muslim cleric as well as a Vodu practitioner,
Speaker 2: or he was one and not the other, or he
Speaker 2: was both, or he was not. People really argue about
Speaker 2: this shit.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: The thing that seems convincing to me is that he
Speaker 2: was both a Muslim cleric and a Vodu practitioner. Yeah,
Speaker 2: his name either comes from the fact that he was literate,
Speaker 2: the name Bookman, or it comes that as a Muslim cleric.
Speaker 2: He was a man of the Book's interesting and he
Speaker 2: either converted to vod away from Islam, or he stayed
Speaker 2: Muslim and became Vodu. And I honestly, as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, what people say has more to do
Speaker 2: with the religious preferences of the people who wrote that history,
Speaker 2: because he's an important hero.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Either way, the British guy who owned him sold him
Speaker 2: off to a French colonist in San Deimong, possibly for
Speaker 2: teaching other enslaved people how to read. People say that
Speaker 2: he was a quote imposing physical stature, and in all
Speaker 2: the art people made of make of him, he is
Speaker 2: ripped as hell. It's a really good art of this guy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 2: He was a coachman for a while, which allowed him
Speaker 2: to travel around and help build that communication network that
Speaker 2: was necessary for the revolution. It's also possible that he
Speaker 2: marooned himself and was living free. That's one of the
Speaker 2: leaders of this ceremony.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other is a woman named Cecil Fatiman who's a
Speaker 2: mambo and she is even more mythologized, and we know
Speaker 2: even less about her for certain, but there is a
Speaker 2: strong oral tradition around her, and you know that's a
Speaker 2: very very valid and important way of transmitting information through
Speaker 2: a time.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 2: I promised yet another character ostensibly born to royalty the
Speaker 2: way at the beginning, someone else was ostensibly born to royalty.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so is she.
Speaker 2: She was born to an African woman and supposedly a
Speaker 2: white Corsican prince or the Prince of Corsica himself, and
Speaker 2: she and her mother and two brothers were sold into
Speaker 2: slavery when she was young, and sand among her two
Speaker 2: brothers were never heard from again. Sometimes she is presented
Speaker 2: as one of the organizers of the ceremony. Sometimes she
Speaker 2: was just a woman in the crowd who stepped up
Speaker 2: to perform the ceremony and be mounted by the lawa.
Speaker 2: Either way, it was a dark and stormy night and
Speaker 2: the rain is ripping through the trees, and it what
Speaker 2: a fucking beautiful moment I have been in.
Speaker 4: Like dude at the down at the equator in Haiti.
Speaker 4: It's raining beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I have read both that the this is
Speaker 2: how mad I am it all the way the history
Speaker 2: is written about it. I have read both that the
Speaker 2: ceremony is very well documented, with accounts appear in print
Speaker 2: only a few years later, and I've also read that
Speaker 2: all of our documentation on it is terrible and it
Speaker 2: might not have happened at all. Great, it's almost certain
Speaker 2: that this happened. Yeah, one day, I am going to
Speaker 2: take a year and just learn about the Haiti Revolution,
Speaker 2: and I will be very excited for that entire year.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, it'd be so good to just like, imagine having
Speaker 2: a year per subject instead.
Speaker 3: Of a week or two. Just deep dive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll get a million degrees instead of the zero
Speaker 2: degrees I currently have. So, because the ceremony is one
Speaker 2: of the most important parts of Haitian history and cultural pride,
Speaker 2: it is also a contentious point. The modern evangelical factions
Speaker 2: claim that this was a Satanic ritual, which is why
Speaker 2: the whole country is cursed today because they made a
Speaker 2: deal with the devil. You can tell by my tone
Speaker 2: of voice that I don't care about this position at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I suspect that more Marxist historians are downplaying the religious
Speaker 2: nature of the revolution, and so they kind of talk
Speaker 2: less about the ceremony, whereas other people play up the
Speaker 2: ceremony because they want to sell seats to the show.
Speaker 2: And if you talk about Vodo, you know it's exotic.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I got to tell you, man, this has been one
Speaker 4: of the struggles I've had over the years, that juxtaposition
Speaker 4: of either playing up or playing down the religious element
Speaker 4: of stuff. It's been a struggle for me, and it's
Speaker 4: kind of been hard to articulate. But it's when black
Speaker 4: history isn't covered by black people, like yeah, is I
Speaker 4: mean down to like the civil rights of being like
Speaker 4: well these were pastors, yeah, you know, like and they
Speaker 4: you know, so to say, on one hand, like you said,
Speaker 4: the evangelical being like, well, that was a Christian, a
Speaker 4: Christian movement, and then being like well, it was a
Speaker 4: lot of Christians in it that had theological positions that
Speaker 4: made them feel like they needed to move forward. But
Speaker 4: then you got the same evangelicals that were like, well
Speaker 4: Martin Luther King didn't understand gospel.
Speaker 3: He preached the gospel wrong.
Speaker 4: He believed in a social gospel, So how could this
Speaker 4: be a Christian revolution? And like and then like you said,
Speaker 4: then you have the Marxist being like no, this was
Speaker 4: about justice, it was about equality, it was about you know,
Speaker 4: the political movements. And it's like the answer is yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, and that is like and in some senses,
Speaker 4: it's like I don't know if anybody who listens to
Speaker 4: pod will know who Vince Staples is. But Vince Staples
Speaker 4: is is a long beach rapper who's probably one of
Speaker 4: the funniest humans on earth. But somebody asked him like,
Speaker 4: when'd you fall in love with hip hop? He was like, man,
Speaker 4: it's like, I was born in nineteen what do you say?
Speaker 4: Like he was like, either ninety one or eighty nine.
Speaker 4: He was like, I was born in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 4: something like that. The numbers not the point. But he
Speaker 4: was just like, that's like asking black people when they
Speaker 4: met Jesus, like we're black, Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: Like this, that's always a part of our story, you know,
Speaker 4: It's always there. So that's what his point about hip hop.
Speaker 4: He was like, if you're born in nineteen ninety, there's
Speaker 4: no part of your life that wasn't that hip hop
Speaker 4: wasn't a part of So when did I fall in
Speaker 4: love with hip What are you talking about? Like, like
Speaker 4: it was always there. So I feel like this particular
Speaker 4: thing to be like it just threw this whole thing.
Speaker 3: Was a Muslim? Was a voodoo? Did this happen?
Speaker 4: Was this important with And it's like yes, right, like
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, like that is our experience?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no that that makes so much sense to me.
Speaker 2: And it's like why I end up like frustrated reading
Speaker 2: about that stuff because I'm like, yeah, like because people
Speaker 2: are like which neat category? Yes he's going to go in. Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, everyone is trying to claim him in different directions.
Speaker 2: And he was like probably just like believed in some
Speaker 2: shit very deeply, in a very meaningful and useful way,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, and maybe it doesn't map perfectly and
Speaker 2: maybe it did, you know, and.
Speaker 4: And maybe it did and maybe they saw no, which
Speaker 4: is what I keep finding, like they just saw no contradiction. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like I see no contradiction between this voodoo and Muslim,
Speaker 4: like I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't see any contradiction.
Speaker 2: No exactly, And like yeah, I mean I remember once
Speaker 2: years ago I had my my great aunt was a
Speaker 2: nun and I was like she used to teach and
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, like what's the deal with like
Speaker 2: creation versus evolution or whatever you teach evolution and she's
Speaker 2: like yeah, And I'm like, is that contradiction And she's
Speaker 2: like no, just don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: I like her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like that was their answers. It's just like no,
Speaker 2: it's just not a big deal, Like it's fine, cared,
Speaker 2: just complicated, and I yeah, and I think you're right
Speaker 2: about the Like I specifically find myself frustrated at how
Speaker 2: much religious people are. They're rel like people are like
Speaker 2: we love John Brown, like like white white leftist love
Speaker 2: John Brown, right, yeah, and like good, he's great. I
Speaker 2: like John Brown too.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's not. He's a good one. What it was yeah,
Speaker 3: and uh.
Speaker 2: But then the same people will be like militantly atheist
Speaker 2: and I'm like, that's okay, you can be an atheist,
Speaker 2: but like John Brown wasn't.
Speaker 4: He was not an atheist. Yes, I believed a mandate
Speaker 4: from God. I am doing God's work here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to take away that part of his character
Speaker 2: is kind of shitty.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, as disrespectful man. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Like so yeah, no, I'm with that, Like I appreciate that,
Speaker 4: like that has always been like a I'm never able
Speaker 4: to put my finger out when I'm like some like
Speaker 4: it don't like I can't. I don't know what to
Speaker 4: tell you, Like, it's it's a it's a cultural experience
Speaker 4: that I feel like others have like in their real life,
Speaker 4: like in the life you actually live, just like you said,
Speaker 4: like you were like I go up a Catholic school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mom, you know aunties a nun like yeah, so
Speaker 3: there was no part of your life that I went
Speaker 3: to public school.
Speaker 2: I'm real proud of that.
Speaker 3: But yeah yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2: My aunt's none.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yours and none. So it's just like, you know,
Speaker 3: we just stuff.
Speaker 4: We went to mass yeah, like yeah, yeah, Like what
Speaker 4: do you want me to say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, anyway, so yeah, the ceremony, uh,
Speaker 2: last week we talked about voting, and we talked about
Speaker 2: the Laa, the spirits, the angels, the saints, whatever people
Speaker 2: want to want to call it, and how there's different
Speaker 2: nations of the Laa, and the Petro nation is the
Speaker 2: nation that doesn't take shit and is willing to get
Speaker 2: shit done and does not mind hurting people to get
Speaker 2: shit done. So that night in the woods, they called
Speaker 2: in a lah named Azilie Danto, who is the most
Speaker 2: important Lua in the Petro family. Azili is more broadly,
Speaker 2: to quote the Encyclopedia of African religion, the Laah of love,
Speaker 2: the symbol of cosmic fertility, par excellence, the mother of
Speaker 2: the universe, the giver of children. It is Azille, indeed,
Speaker 2: who is responsible for the continuous flow of life. So
Speaker 2: that's the more broad like feminine spirit that they're bringing in.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of different versions of Azille. Azili
Speaker 2: Freda is the Rata version of Azille, the nice one,
Speaker 2: the calm one, the embodiment of femininity, who is bisexual
Speaker 2: as hell and doesn't care what gender of person she
Speaker 2: mounts love it. Ezili Danto, the one that they're going
Speaker 2: to call in this night. She is not the nice
Speaker 2: version of her. She is the feminine incarnation of rage
Speaker 2: and the hard working mother god dog. Yes, yes, let's go.
Speaker 2: And like that's why I'm like, oh, we can't strip
Speaker 2: out the religion, because this is the spirit, the literal spirit,
Speaker 2: that is where they're coming from at the start, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Danto is angry and enraged when she is displeased. She
Speaker 2: is depicted as a black woman carrying a black infant
Speaker 2: girl in pink clothes. She has two parallel vertical scars
Speaker 2: on her right cheek. Some people say that the scars
Speaker 2: were ritualistically done in an African style, others that she
Speaker 2: got them fighting white people in the revolution. Sometimes she
Speaker 2: is presented as no nose which was cut off in battle.
Speaker 2: And she is the single mother of seven children. So
Speaker 2: you know she knows how to get shit done.
Speaker 3: She can get it done. Yeh.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they're in the wind torn woods planning a
Speaker 2: violent revolution that they each assume will be the death
Speaker 2: of them. Duddy Bookman gives a speech at the end
Speaker 2: of everything. He said, He said, listen to the voice
Speaker 2: of liberty which speaks in the hearts of us all.
Speaker 2: He called on people to reject the Christian false guy
Speaker 2: and trust in the Supreme being, something found in most
Speaker 2: of the African religious traditions that have come over. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he said, quote the God who created the sun, which
Speaker 2: gives us light, which rouses the waves and rules the storm.
Speaker 2: Though hidden in the clouds, he watches us. He sees
Speaker 2: all that the white man does. The god of a
Speaker 2: white man inspires him with crime. But our God calls
Speaker 2: upon us to do good works. Our God, who is
Speaker 2: good to us, orders us to revenge our wrongs. He
Speaker 2: will direct our arms and aid us throw away the
Speaker 2: symbol of the God of the whites, who has so
Speaker 2: often caused us to weep and listen to the voice
Speaker 2: of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of all.
Speaker 4: Who that is a scathing yeah, scathing report.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, buddy is.
Speaker 4: I've always been like, you know, fascinated on, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: the role like in American the American slavery tradition where
Speaker 4: like generally speaking like Sunday's slaves were allowed to go
Speaker 4: to church, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And because of that, like that's.
Speaker 4: Why I like a lot of our expression is very passionate,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, and energetic, and also looking
Speaker 4: a lot more like our own animus traditions of embodiment.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: But one thing I've always cracked up on is like
Speaker 4: y'all handed us this book and by the second by
Speaker 4: the second book, you get to Exodus, and you're like,
Speaker 4: well wait.
Speaker 3: A minute, now, like.
Speaker 5: It's say right here, yeah, you're the bad guys, Like
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, according to the book, yeah, Like you know,
Speaker 5: so we was like I like this, Moses, dude, you know,
Speaker 5: like yeah, so so yeah, so you come up with
Speaker 5: that and where you're and so like a lot of times, yeah,
Speaker 5: just in like the Black Church tradition, who was like,
Speaker 5: I don't know what, I don't know a Bible they reading, but.
Speaker 3: This one this will say liberty. You don't anyway?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, like I I meet ex evangelicals, that's the
Speaker 2: word I think. Yeah, yes, they're like I was like, well,
Speaker 2: how'd you get away from the church, And they're like, well,
Speaker 2: I read the book they gave me.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen.
Speaker 5: You're like, oh, if I'm a followed dude, yeah, like
Speaker 5: the dude that you supposed to was supposed to be followed.
Speaker 3: That means I can't follow, y'all. That's what it certain
Speaker 3: turns out to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like, you know, there's a lot of inconsistencies
Speaker 2: and complicated things in the Bible and like, but it's
Speaker 2: fairly consistent on like take care of poor people and
Speaker 2: the rich people are in trouble on the care for
Speaker 2: the poor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, being on the side of those suffering.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they have this ritual in the woods. Social
Speaker 2: fatimon sacrificed a black pig and then they all drank
Speaker 2: its blood. Some say they drank human blood too, which
Speaker 2: probably didn't happen, but you know what, if it did,
Speaker 2: it does not bother me. One.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the Filipino side of me. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a dinner one anyway.
Speaker 2: Oh oh no, I don't know that one.
Speaker 3: Oh I got it.
Speaker 4: Oh oh hey, okay, now the cool Zone Reddit all
Speaker 4: my p noise listen, So diniguan they call it the
Speaker 4: chocolate meats. So I know this stuff because from where
Speaker 4: I'm from and my Stepmo's Filipino. But basically it's it's
Speaker 4: beef and pork and it looks like a brown sauce
Speaker 4: over it, but the sauce is blood.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's like Catholics
Speaker 2: literally drink blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: English people all of their food is like blood pudding.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I can't handle English food.
Speaker 3: And still got blood in it. Yeah yeah again, it anyway.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't bother me. But it's all played up, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And this is not the first time we talked about
Speaker 2: this on the show. Before they have this revolution, they
Speaker 2: swear a solemn oath to one another. I think ritual
Speaker 2: is a really important and underutilized tactic and way of
Speaker 2: bringing people together. Absolutely, they swear a solemn oath to
Speaker 2: each other that they will never betray the revolution. They
Speaker 2: declared that those who died were promised that their soul
Speaker 2: would return to Ganen, just sort of a spiritual conception
Speaker 2: of affort. He's used as like an afterlife. Those who
Speaker 2: betrayed the plot never would. Bookman himself would die early
Speaker 2: in the fighting. His head is on a pike, probably
Speaker 2: at the age of twenty four. But you know what,
Speaker 2: he fucking succeeded. He accomplished something in his life that
Speaker 2: almost no one else can claim, Like, yeah, leading the
Speaker 2: most successful slaver vault in fucking probably human history and
Speaker 2: at least the Western Hemisphere's history.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, since them Europeans stepped foot on Africa, this
Speaker 4: is the most successful.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And so like I'll take Dina twenty four for that,
Speaker 2: you know, Like.
Speaker 3: It's like it's pretty rad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Fatimon survived the revolution. She married one of
Speaker 2: the most important commanders who was later president of Haiti
Speaker 2: for like a year, and by most accounts, she lived
Speaker 2: to be one hundred and twelve years old. Obviously, birth
Speaker 2: records are kind of fuzzy, but you know what, she
Speaker 2: could live to be one hundred and twelve.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After she died, she became a Lawah named Marionette. She
Speaker 2: is known as Marionette of the Dry Arms or Marionette
Speaker 2: of the dry Feet because she's a skeleton. Her colors
Speaker 2: are black and blood red. When she possesses people, they
Speaker 2: become violent. People are afraid of her, but she frees
Speaker 2: people from bondage, and I think she's cool. She's the
Speaker 2: protector of were wolves.
Speaker 3: Whoa yeah, okay, yeah, I know a lot of people
Speaker 3: are named after her. Fuck yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And they have the ceremony, they vow to be faithful
Speaker 2: to the revolution, and then they fight. They don't fight
Speaker 2: for ads, but because I didn't have a producer telling
Speaker 2: me when to cut to ads, I forgot, And so
Speaker 2: they're later in the episode. And I know you all
Speaker 2: were thinking, where are my ads? But here, here they are,
Speaker 2: and we're back. The very next morning, a group of
Speaker 2: people from a bunch of different plantations and maybe maroons
Speaker 2: showed up and set off towards the Noah Sugar factory.
Speaker 2: This is the one that had kicked off a lot
Speaker 2: of the strikes with that guy Jean Jacques was hanging
Speaker 2: out as an unemployed slave, a concept that had never
Speaker 2: occurred to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I never thought about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They found the white guy overseeing night work and
Speaker 2: they stabbed him to death. The estate agent ran out
Speaker 2: to see what was happening, so they shot him. They
Speaker 2: killed at least two more white workers. They didn't kill
Speaker 2: the surgeon, and then just around midnight they burned the
Speaker 2: fucking slave labor saw factory to the ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then they marched the Dudy plantation. Oh that was the
Speaker 2: reason bookman's name is Duddies because he was owned by
Speaker 2: someone name.
Speaker 3: He was owned by. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They went Hut to Hut and spread the word
Speaker 2: to people to spread the word elsewhere, to go to
Speaker 2: the other plantations. They took the agent prisoner. The agent
Speaker 2: said that they discussed their plans openly in front of him,
Speaker 2: which was that they wanted quote, nothing less than the
Speaker 2: destruction of all of the white people except some who
Speaker 2: didn't own property, some priests, some surgeons, some women, and
Speaker 2: to set fire to all the plantations and making themselves
Speaker 2: masters of the country. And it's like this is presented
Speaker 2: as like a gotcha, but I'm like, yeah, that's really
Speaker 2: nice of them to carve out so many exceptions.
Speaker 3: It's so great. Yeah, you know, it so great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I doesn't even own anyone. Why are you
Speaker 2: gonna kill his?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: You know cool? Like yeah, they marched and gathered forces
Speaker 2: as they went. Fifteen hundred of them were fighting by
Speaker 2: the time they reached the coast. And this wasn't the
Speaker 2: only force. There was already revolt at the coastal plantations
Speaker 2: as well. So they like show up and people are
Speaker 2: already revolting coffee workers. Yeah, like it just fucking this
Speaker 2: is like fucking it was just go time. And then
Speaker 2: they all went basically yeah, like is it We're waiting
Speaker 2: for it? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Coffee workers threw off their chains and were coming down
Speaker 2: out of the mountains to join up with them. All
Speaker 2: the forces met up at the coast and then split
Speaker 2: into two. Bookmen went east, burning sugar fields and refineries
Speaker 2: as he went. And there's one fun moment that stands out.
Speaker 2: This huge army comes upon twenty white militia people, all
Speaker 2: but one guy is like fuck this fleet. Nineteen of
Speaker 2: the white guys run away, but the guy who stays
Speaker 2: is a slaver who used to own one of the
Speaker 2: guys in the army, and the slaver says, quote, you wretch,
Speaker 2: I was only ever good to you. Why do you
Speaker 2: want to kill me?
Speaker 3: That's what they always say. Yeah, but I was I
Speaker 3: was nice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, god yeah, well what about Meto?
Speaker 3: But I was like you you like y'all like Meto?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, totally yeah. And the coachman ex slave, stabs
Speaker 2: the guy and says, that is true, but I promised
Speaker 2: to kill you.
Speaker 3: I love it. It's like, oh yeah, but I mean
Speaker 3: I swore an oath man. It's just a law.
Speaker 2: Yes, what's happening. Other revolutionaries would actually protect their former owners,
Speaker 2: just a few of them, but a lot of the
Speaker 2: leaders ended up doing this, And I think I think
Speaker 2: this probably relates to that a lot of the leaders
Speaker 2: were like the drivers and the people who are a
Speaker 2: little bit closer to I knew them. The leader of
Speaker 2: the second wing was a guy named Bellin, and he
Speaker 2: gave a boat to the people who ran his old
Speaker 2: plantation so that they could get away, and so then
Speaker 2: the people fighting alongside him killed him for letting the
Speaker 2: slavers escape. These two forces go around, mostly winning, burning
Speaker 2: almost two hundred plantations foreing fifteen thousand people in like
Speaker 2: the first like ten days, and all the colonists in
Speaker 2: the north flee to capt fronts while the capital but
Speaker 2: the revolution was just getting started. And I know that
Speaker 2: to keep coming back to this like did they have
Speaker 2: a kill all the white people attitude, because it's the
Speaker 2: thing that gets argued about, and I know I kind
Speaker 2: of keep being like, I kind of don't care if
Speaker 2: they did. But it's also still messier than anyone can
Speaker 2: easily explain, yea, because they all had different fucking ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they were at this point probably, but again, but
Speaker 2: it's also it's so frustrating, right because then there's all
Speaker 2: this propaganda against them for hundreds of years about how
Speaker 2: they're all evil or whatever the fuck. But probably they
Speaker 2: were killing white peop, putting their including kids, and putting
Speaker 2: their heads on pikes and shit, the same shit that
Speaker 2: had been happening to them. The white people insisted it
Speaker 2: was a race war, and it became a race war.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Colonial forces counter attacked, attacking armed camps of rebels, but
Speaker 2: the rebels melted into the mountains. Bookman himself died in battle.
Speaker 2: Jean Jacques was captured and executed. Peace talk started up
Speaker 2: pretty quick. The priests did a lot of the intermediary
Speaker 2: work because they were sort of neutral. Yeah, And the
Speaker 2: first offer was return to slavery and we won't punish
Speaker 2: you for the revolt, like amnesty.
Speaker 3: You know, like, uh, are are we winning?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was there at a Yeah, we're winning.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Their counteroffer, which was honestly perfectly fucking like nicer than
Speaker 2: they should have asked for, was full amnesty, emancipation for everyone,
Speaker 2: and then they would go back and work for wages,
Speaker 2: whereas I'm like, ah, I just seize them means a
Speaker 2: production while you're at it, but like you know.
Speaker 4: What, like yeah, like I'm down to work. Yeah, Like
Speaker 4: I'm just saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I want to get paid for my work
Speaker 2: instead of being owned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Don't you like getting paid
Speaker 3: for your work? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so at this point they're not actually fighting against
Speaker 2: France in their mind, they're fighting against the white supremacist
Speaker 2: local occupation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So France looks at this revolt and is like, all right, fine,
Speaker 2: we're taking away what's left of the rights for free
Speaker 2: black people. And so then the free black people are like,
Speaker 2: all right, even more, we're with the revolution, and here
Speaker 2: we are in part four. I thought I was gonna
Speaker 2: do all the ins and outs of this incredibly complicated
Speaker 2: strategic thing, and I am not going to, yeah, because
Speaker 2: I'm not going to make a six parter or yet.
Speaker 2: But in broader strokes, the new revolutionary government in France,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna put revolutionary quotes there because they're going to
Speaker 2: send six thousand troops to put down the slaver volt.
Speaker 2: They fail, and they're like, all right, fine, this isn't working.
Speaker 2: We need to let free black people join the reactionary
Speaker 2: forces fighting against the slaver volt. So they started enrolling
Speaker 2: free men of color into the military, including as officers,
Speaker 2: and so they force diversified the Colonial Assembly to be
Speaker 2: half white and half free men of color. And you'll
Speaker 2: be shocked to know the colonial administration isn't happy about this.
Speaker 2: The whole Western world is kind of going ape shit.
Speaker 2: At this point. It's seventeen ninety three. The French killed
Speaker 2: their king, Spain and England declare war on the revolutionary government.
Speaker 2: Spain decides to back the Haitian revolution, making Toussaint and
Speaker 2: the other revolutionary leaders officers in the Royal Spanish Army.
Speaker 2: They offer enslave people their freedom if they fought. They're
Speaker 2: not abolishing slavery, they're just freeing individuals. But you know
Speaker 2: that's a decent deal for people. They're like, yeah, we'll
Speaker 2: take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In seventeen ninety three, it wasn't looking great for
Speaker 2: the Haitian revolutionaries. Thousands of people were back in chains.
Speaker 2: But then the fucking white supremacist colonists they're like, we
Speaker 2: don't like having these free black people around, so they
Speaker 2: staged a revolt against the French government, also, the one
Speaker 2: that was sort of trying to help them but like
Speaker 2: forcing them to diversify. It's all of a sudden, the
Speaker 2: pro diversity crowd is like, all right, fuck it, full
Speaker 2: emancipation if you help us beat back the other parts
Speaker 2: of France, and so fucking messy. The rebels now joined
Speaker 2: the French revolutionary army. On Halloween seventeen ninety three, France
Speaker 2: declares a general emancipation, no more slavery, and this kicks
Speaker 2: in in seventeen ninety five. Not because they were like
Speaker 2: slow to do it, I think, but I think it
Speaker 2: was like, literally, they're in the middle of a revolution.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're busy too, Yeah, yeah, France is like, listen,
Speaker 4: you guys, Okay, listen, if we just call emancipation, will
Speaker 4: you guys stop calling us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, that's what they did. They're like,
Speaker 2: I fine, you fucking win, and.
Speaker 3: But you got it, you got it, go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So suddenly all the former enslaved people are French citizens. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Macndahl and the Mosquitos are doing most of the killing
Speaker 2: of the various invading European armies. It's yellow fever is
Speaker 2: killing most of the soldiers. You saw it, Levitor, who
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about it in any length I thought
Speaker 2: was going to be the primary character of this entire thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he is consolidating power. He's sort of a moderate at
Speaker 2: this point. He doesn't want to kill all the white people.
Speaker 2: He's down to be part of France so long as
Speaker 2: he's in charge. And he actually, controversially to his own people,
Speaker 2: he wants the plantation economy back. He just wants people
Speaker 2: working as paid workers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He starts using his army to force people to go
Speaker 2: back to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then he goes to war against other would be leaders.
Speaker 2: He comes out victorious. He's pretty against Vodu at this point.
Speaker 2: Once he's in charge, he forbids dancing and gathering at night,
Speaker 2: and things probably would have settled down at this point.
Speaker 2: But Napoleon comes to power in France and he's planning
Speaker 2: on bringing back the French Empire instead of the Republic.
Speaker 2: He's like, fuck this, We're conquering San du Moung. We're
Speaker 2: bringing back slavery because he wants the economy back and
Speaker 2: he's a racist. Yeah, he sends twenty thousand troops and
Speaker 2: again this is really about race for him. His brother
Speaker 2: in law, Charles Leclerc or Leclair or whatever, I don't know,
Speaker 2: fuck with this guy. He invades in eighteen oh two
Speaker 2: and he we must destroy all the blacks in the mountains,
Speaker 2: men and women, and spare only children under twelve years
Speaker 2: of age. We must destroy half of those in the planes,
Speaker 2: and we must not leave a single colored person in
Speaker 2: the colony who has worn an epaulet. Like why though,
Speaker 2: because he it's funny, because I think he claims he's like,
Speaker 2: oh woe is me, This is the only way to
Speaker 2: do it, because he's like they can't be trusted or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and his own black officers start defecting from his ranks. Right,
Speaker 2: because he's like, I were just going to kill all
Speaker 2: the black people now, and all of those people who
Speaker 2: went and joined his military. He arrested all the black
Speaker 2: troops and his own forces, executing a thousand of them
Speaker 2: by pushing them overboard with flower sacks tied to their necks. Wow,
Speaker 2: though it doesn't do you any good decide with the fascists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it never works out for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The French arrest Lutorm. He dies in French prison.
Speaker 2: But people keep fighting, as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: One thing I read was like, look, they actually didn't
Speaker 2: fight too hard to protect Luvatore. They kind of didn't
Speaker 2: like him because he's being a dick and like he
Speaker 2: was in the army to force everyone to go to work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but he dies in French prison, which is a shame
Speaker 2: because before he didn't have a chance to listen to
Speaker 2: the products and services that support this show.
Speaker 3: You see what I'm saying, Like he should have Yeah.
Speaker 2: They should have stuck around longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was very smooth, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's the ads and we're back, and so the
Speaker 2: cleric dies a yellow fever and so this should be good, right,
Speaker 2: The racist guy dies, Yeah, the way more racist guy
Speaker 2: comes in row Shambau ro Shambo. Yeah, rock paper scissors.
Speaker 2: You might have known this. You know where the world's
Speaker 2: first gas chambers were used.
Speaker 3: So I did know this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they were used to kill the black prisoners
Speaker 2: of war. Yeah, right here by Rochimbo. Yeah. They would
Speaker 2: just fill up the bottoms of the ships with like
Speaker 2: a poison gas and then throw all the black prisoners
Speaker 2: of war down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing I'm going to say, controversially, no
Speaker 2: white people fought for the Haitian Revolution. But do you
Speaker 2: want to know why? I can say this for certain
Speaker 2: because the revolution reformulated the concept of race in Haiti.
Speaker 2: Hundreds of Polish soldiers fought for the revolution, and so
Speaker 2: how the Haitian Revolution defined blackness was if you're fighting
Speaker 2: for the revolution, you're black. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: So the polls, most of whom had European heritage, actually
Speaker 2: some of at least I'm aware of one officer and
Speaker 2: probably some others who actually had African heritage. Also because
Speaker 2: there's black Polish people because yeah, much to the shock
Speaker 2: of modern wise supremacist Europe actually had black people in it,
Speaker 2: going back forever yes, anyway, the polls are mostly what
Speaker 2: we would call white.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: They were considered black in the war legally and have
Speaker 2: been ever Cincinnati.
Speaker 4: This is one of my favorite things about race and politics. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like it's a it's a it's a choice, like being white.
Speaker 4: It's a choice, like you know that, Like it's it's
Speaker 4: only by the law. It's just like you said, look,
Speaker 4: you Bolus was black people. So just I don't know
Speaker 4: what to tell you, buddy. Yeah, I Irism, Irish, Yeah, Irish,
Speaker 4: y'all y're black.
Speaker 2: Made the wrong choice.
Speaker 3: You had a chance, Yeah, you could have. You could
Speaker 3: have stayed with us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty fucking mad about that. Like, whiteness is
Speaker 2: such a like it's the devil's bargain, right, You're like
Speaker 2: give up your entire culture and uniqueness in order to
Speaker 2: gain power, you know. Yeah, and so all that's left
Speaker 2: is like fucking shamrocks in Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Speaker 4: You know, you guys have but the Irish have been
Speaker 4: very on the whole when it comes down to it
Speaker 4: being pro Palestine, you know, supporting a black panthers Like.
Speaker 2: Oh, Irish, yes, Irish American, No, yeah, Irish.
Speaker 4: American is holy your story. I'm talking about the Irish, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, because they remember what it's like
Speaker 2: to be colonized because it was their grandfather's time, you know,
Speaker 2: like and actually part of them it's still call a colony.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, So the Polish legions, which I yeah, I
Speaker 2: find this a fucking fascinating story.
Speaker 3: So amazing.
Speaker 2: Napoleon sent five thousand of the twenty thousand troops were Poles.
Speaker 2: Most of them died a yellow fever, about four thousand
Speaker 2: of them, but hundreds of them switched teams because they
Speaker 2: themselves were freedom fighters. Because Poland. Yeah, other countries, especially
Speaker 2: Prussia and Russia, had been piecemeal stealing bits of Poland
Speaker 2: for a while. Yeah, Poles fought back. They lost a
Speaker 2: couple of wars. In seventeen ninety four, they staged an
Speaker 2: uprising that grew out of popular revolt against this occupation.
Speaker 2: After about half a year, the uprising was put down. Austria,
Speaker 2: Prussia and Russia were like, fine, we're carving this shit up.
Speaker 2: Seventeen ninety seven, they split the country up three ways
Speaker 2: and basically was like, there's no more Poland. And Poland
Speaker 2: was gone for like one hundred years. A fuck ton
Speaker 2: of Polish troops escaped to France and join the French
Speaker 2: military because they're like, well, enemy and my enemy, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and they thought revolutionary France and revolutionaries, they make them
Speaker 2: rescue us. Napoleon came to power in eighteen hundred and
Speaker 2: he was like, hell, yeah, let's use these Poles as
Speaker 2: fucking useful idiots. So he sent five thousand of them
Speaker 2: to die and send them on, and they were horribly
Speaker 2: mistreated within the military. They were ordered to like just
Speaker 2: whenever you need someone like run at the front and
Speaker 2: get killed. They sent the Poles and they were often
Speaker 2: just like straight up not paid. And so they were like, well,
Speaker 2: these Haitians they're doing the same thing that we're doing.
Speaker 2: They're trying to fight off empires and everything has been
Speaker 2: stolen for them. So roughly half of them switched sides,
Speaker 2: and as far as I can tell, the ones who
Speaker 2: didn't switch sides, like functionally switch sides, they were like
Speaker 2: refusing to shoot and just call.
Speaker 3: They're just like yeah, yeah, they quiet quit it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they quiet.
Speaker 2: Quit the fucking invasion.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when the revolution was one in eighteen oh four,
Speaker 2: Haiti gets a constitution and it formally enshrined the polls,
Speaker 2: the white Negroes of Europe.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. That is a ska band.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally. I'd be sketched out by them, right right right.
Speaker 4: Like, hey, I need y'all need to unpack this. Every
Speaker 4: time you started doing music, you need to unpack where
Speaker 4: you got this name.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally. Yeah, there's this this Norwegian folk band. There's
Speaker 2: maybe Swedish on a Scandinavian folk band that I listen
Speaker 2: to sometimes for a while. Before every single show, they
Speaker 2: would be like, we are not Nazis, and we are
Speaker 2: against Nazis. We were against the fact that Nazis use
Speaker 2: our heritage to try and do racism. Here's traditional music, Okay,
Speaker 2: here we go yeah's and they're not even like leftists
Speaker 2: or whatever. They're just not Nazis.
Speaker 4: No, it's like just we're not Nazis. Yeah, we still
Speaker 4: we still live on a planet that that's the wrong
Speaker 4: side of history.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the Polish generals who actually died a
Speaker 2: yellow fever. We don't know what he would have done
Speaker 2: was the first known black Polish general named uh Jablinowski.
Speaker 2: Again because again he was just but this guy speaking
Speaker 2: of when you're saying like how these people went to
Speaker 2: the same schools as like you know, the Napoleons or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jablinowski had actually gone to school with Napoleon literally, wow, Okay,
Speaker 2: and Napoleon and all the other students had called him
Speaker 2: racist shit. Because I also don't want to paint Europe
Speaker 2: as like a weird post, you know, racial utopia just
Speaker 2: because there's black people there. Yeah, but Napoleon, Yeah, you
Speaker 2: to call this guy racist shit. And yeah, about four
Speaker 2: hundred people in the end survive. The Poles survived this,
Speaker 2: and they mostly stayed in a village called Cazale.
Speaker 3: And one of the most.
Speaker 2: Interesting syncretic traditions that comes out of it, because like
Speaker 2: we talked about a Zelee and how there's like the
Speaker 2: black Madonna figure is one of the symbols, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a Polish icon of the Virgin Mary that goes
Speaker 2: back at least to fourteen thirty, but probably the year
Speaker 2: three twenty six.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And it's one of the most important Polish Christian pieces
Speaker 2: of art. It's called the Black Madonna of Chestejova, and
Speaker 2: it's a super old painting that is a black Madonna
Speaker 2: holding a black Jesus. I think that's important because you
Speaker 2: have all these people being like you still run across
Speaker 2: people who think Jesus was white, you know.
Speaker 3: At that they're dinosaurs if they do. Ye. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And like in the year three twenty six there was
Speaker 2: a painting of came black Jesus and black Madonna.
Speaker 3: Yeah there was already a black Jesus. Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most important Polish icons.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a connection. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So when they landed in Haiti, they was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: you're not scary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually agree with y'all. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So again them speed running the revolution and pointing out
Speaker 2: different bits of it, Haiti becomes a country. This guy,
Speaker 2: Jean Jacques de Sellin us he's in charge. He is controversial,
Speaker 2: he's accused of genocide. Interestingly enough, no one bothers accusing
Speaker 2: the French of having led a genocide on the island
Speaker 2: and focuses.
Speaker 3: On him, of course.
Speaker 2: In a public statement from eighteen oh four, he said,
Speaker 2: quote liberty, independence or death. Considering that there still remains
Speaker 2: in the island of Haiti individuals who have contributed, by
Speaker 2: their guilty writings or by their sanguinary acquisitions, to the drowning, suffocating,
Speaker 2: assassinating hanging and shooting of more than sixty thousand of
Speaker 2: our brethren under the inhuman government of la cleric in
Speaker 2: russiam Beau. This measure is entered into the order to
Speaker 2: inform the nations of the world that although we grant
Speaker 2: asylum and protection to those who act candidly and friendly
Speaker 2: towards us, nothing shall ever turn our vengeance from those
Speaker 2: murderers who have bathed themselves with pleasure in the blood
Speaker 2: of the innocent children of Haiti. And so you have
Speaker 2: this the massacre of eighteen oh four, and basically he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: we should kill all the remaining French people on the
Speaker 2: island except all of the following list of don't kill
Speaker 2: these people. Yeah, And they killed between three thousand and
Speaker 2: seven thousand people. A lot of people were like, the
Speaker 2: saliness had to actually show up before people would really
Speaker 2: do it. People were like, Oh, we don't know if
Speaker 2: we want to kill all these people. The Poles were
Speaker 2: of course legally black, so they weren't killed. So were
Speaker 2: the Germans, apparently just literally just because they had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the slave trade. Like I don't think
Speaker 2: they even fought. I think they just were a flavors
Speaker 2: and they spared many or most surgeons, women and children.
Speaker 2: They absolutely killed a bunch of people, And yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. And then to Salonis, he he regularly consulted
Speaker 2: with Votu priests, but he also banned vodu ceremonies and
Speaker 2: regularly had votu practitioners shop because he was afraid of
Speaker 2: being poisoned. I want to read like whole books about
Speaker 2: a lot of these people, but I get the impression
Speaker 2: it's just kind of the classic power problem, Like you
Speaker 2: can be a really amazing revolutionary and then once you
Speaker 2: have absolute power, you don't always do great. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: the revolution itself scared the ever loving piss out of
Speaker 2: white supremacist all over the Western world and emboldened abolitionists everywhere,
Speaker 2: and the rest of the world has never forgiven Haiti
Speaker 2: for it. But the people of the world fucking owe
Speaker 2: so much to the people who fought in that revolution,
Speaker 2: more than we can ever know.
Speaker 3: It's a good way to put it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've meddled in Haiti and Haitian politics ever since,
Speaker 4: and like do everything we can. It almost is it's
Speaker 4: almost like I just don't know what you gain from this.
Speaker 4: To make sure that Haiti stays unstable.
Speaker 2: Margaret from the future.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: There's a part of all of this that prop and
Speaker 2: I talked about a couple days after the recording that
Speaker 2: I want to add in here about just how brutal
Speaker 2: the world has been to Haiti ever since. In eighteen
Speaker 2: twenty five, twenty years after Haiti's independence, the French king
Speaker 2: sent warships to Haiti to demand that they pay reparations
Speaker 2: like Haiti had to pay reparations to France for freeing
Speaker 2: itself one hundred and fifty million francs. This is ten
Speaker 2: times the amount that the US had to pay to
Speaker 2: literally double itself with the Louisiana purchase. And this reparations
Speaker 2: was about stolen property, including you know themselves. Then France
Speaker 2: gave Haiti predatory loans to pay it back, kind of
Speaker 2: prefiguring the modern International Monetary Fund style of predatory loans.
Speaker 2: It took one hundred and twenty two years to pay
Speaker 2: off this loan, and along the way, the US occupied
Speaker 2: Haiti violently for nineteen years from nineteen fifteen to nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four, using forced labor of Haitians, which killed just
Speaker 2: a fuck ton of people. In the end, imperialists basically
Speaker 2: just demanded Haiti pay forty percent of its income towards
Speaker 2: its debt, and so they finally paid off their debt
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven by crippling their economy.
Speaker 4: My curiosity, of course stays itching. But I think ultimately
Speaker 4: is what you're saying, where it was just like they
Speaker 4: threw off their slave owners and it was proof of
Speaker 4: concept and that's what we needed, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I think that's part of the you know,
Speaker 2: you're like, well, what's what does the world have to
Speaker 2: gain to keep punishing Haiti over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: And I think it gets back to that thing where
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, it's not about economics,
Speaker 2: it's about white supremacy. It is about like, you did
Speaker 2: that and you were not allowed and you are punished
Speaker 2: forever for dare to challenge white supremacy and like, and
Speaker 2: I used to it's like interesting because I see how
Speaker 2: white supremacy is this very important piece of the master
Speaker 2: oppressive world we have in front of us or whatever.
Speaker 2: But I used to kind of think that it all
Speaker 2: came down to economics. Yeah, and it's just like learning
Speaker 2: more and more that I'm like, no, a lot of
Speaker 2: it really just straight up comes down to racism and
Speaker 2: like white supremacy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and to have to continue to bolster something that
Speaker 4: is materially false, which is we are a superior spechi,
Speaker 4: that white is a superior species than everybody else. You
Speaker 4: have to keep adding little twigs and duct tape to
Speaker 4: keep that thing standing, you know. And it's just like
Speaker 4: this is at what point are you like this is absurd? Guys,
Speaker 4: just like you don't have Like sometimes I feel like
Speaker 4: the human in me wants to be like you don't
Speaker 4: have to do this, man, Like you don't have to
Speaker 4: do this, Like you're I know, you're exhausted, Like you're exhausted.
Speaker 4: You don't have to do this. Yeah it's fine, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: You can just like you can just chill out with
Speaker 2: everyone else, you know, just real.
Speaker 3: Man, Like just here, have a beer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just sit down, man, smoke this like just like
Speaker 4: you see we're all having a great time. Yeah, we're
Speaker 4: all just we're all having a great time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When you're saying earlier about how like just a
Speaker 2: second about it leaves you like this four parter does
Speaker 2: not get into half of the shit that I thought
Speaker 2: it was going to. And like there's still so much
Speaker 2: about the way that the revolution itself unfolded on a
Speaker 2: political level larger than that. I found myself focused in
Speaker 2: the end on the like the whipsaw context, the like
Speaker 2: things that built up to it, partly because I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's more modern overlaps than I expected, especially all the
Speaker 2: weird basically DEI and like the you know, there's all
Speaker 2: these things that I thought were really important, and then
Speaker 2: I but yeah, I look at this and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I want to know more about to some and the
Speaker 2: like complicated nature of like coming to power where he
Speaker 2: was like, look, oh, I'm fine to be French and
Speaker 2: I'm fining to keep the plantation system. I just want
Speaker 2: people to get work, you know. But then also, like
Speaker 2: the implication at least some of the stuff I'm reading
Speaker 2: is that we've kind of became kind of a tyrant
Speaker 2: and so did dissalonest or whatever. Yeah, then I'm like,
Speaker 2: but but everything's so politicized with the Haitian Revolution that
Speaker 2: it's like maybe more than any other topic. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I've probab run across all the ones almost as
Speaker 2: bad as this, but like everything is so politicized and
Speaker 2: propagandized in different directions. It's like just fucking hard to know,
Speaker 2: you know, without without getting my degree in it. And
Speaker 2: and so that's like why I'm trying to focus on
Speaker 2: the like stuff I can feel a little bit more
Speaker 2: confident about I can, which is that it's fucking cool
Speaker 2: to have a revolution.
Speaker 3: Man, well these are these are cool folks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is always moral and good to burn down
Speaker 2: the plantation that slaves people.
Speaker 5: I mean, I feel like there are very few absolutes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that would be that would be one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like stabbing the guy being like but I
Speaker 2: always treat you good, and you're like, yeah, I gotta
Speaker 2: kill you.
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, that's just like that's just.
Speaker 2: Kind of a moral truth. Sometimes you're like, yeah, but
Speaker 2: you you fucking own me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's the thing.
Speaker 4: Man, But if I but see, if I don't kill you,
Speaker 4: and this guy's asking and that, and then it's like
Speaker 4: then we just all go home.
Speaker 3: So I might as well, you know, this is what
Speaker 3: we're gonna do. Yeah, at times nine o'clock, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just the arrogance of like being alone
Speaker 2: in front of an army and being like, you wretch,
Speaker 2: you know, you're not getting out of.
Speaker 4: That and then to be like Okay, so if y'all stop,
Speaker 4: we won't punish you.
Speaker 3: You just go back to you like stop what Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because they had a chance out so many
Speaker 2: times they were down to be part of France. They
Speaker 2: were down to hell they probably maybe not, maybe it's
Speaker 2: possible that the slave system would have stayed if they
Speaker 2: hadn't fucking alienated all the free people of color, like yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, like, yeah, it's possible. And I would like
Speaker 2: to say that, you know, the slaves were the largest
Speaker 2: portion of the people doing the fighting, you know, of course. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I like to think they would have pulled it
Speaker 2: off anyway. But yeah, well thanks for coming along on
Speaker 2: this this uh this journey with me.
Speaker 4: Oh man, thank you. You gave me an option, and
Speaker 4: I'm glad I took this option. This is uh, this
Speaker 4: is fun times.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well I am fucking brain dead.
Speaker 3: I'm done. Help me done, Like I was like prop bipop,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah yeah, everyone check out Who Politics Is prop
Speaker 2: It is an amazing podcast about current events and I
Speaker 2: have a sub stack you can google it.
Speaker 4: I gotta figure out I got to figure out a
Speaker 4: way to get you on, Like I gotta figure out, Like,
Speaker 4: we got to find a topic.
Speaker 2: That like wors the angle is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what the angle is? Yeah, I'll be into it.
Speaker 3: We'll figure it out. I think, I think the crowd
Speaker 3: wild love it.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well next week more cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Bye everyone, Let's go.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: You get your podcasts.