As Jim Burroway reported yesterday, on Tuesday, Rachel Maddow interviewed (here and here) Bob Hunter, a member of the secretive and powerful American religio-political organization The Family. Maddow spoke with Hunter about The Family’s ties to the Ugandan kill-the-gays legislation.I encourage readers to listen to the two clips of the interview to which I’ve linked above. As Maddow notes, it was at an event associated with a national prayer breakfast sponsored by The Family in Uganda that the kill-the-gays legislation was reportedly first proposed. The legislator who introduced the legislation in Uganda’s parliament, David Bahati, is reportedly a member of The Family, as is Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, who was quoted recently saying, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”
Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni is also reportedly a member of The Family. When pressed about the ties of these Ugandan leaders to the The Family, Bob Hunter tells Rachel Maddow that they are “related to The Family,” and, “I agree that these guys are involved [i.e., with The Family].”
In other words, The Family’s fingerprints are all over the kill-the-gays legislation in Uganda, though, now that there is international controversy about the impending legislation, with public discussion of the role of the right-wing American religio-political group The Family in shaping Ugandan politics, The Family naturally wishes to distance itself from the legislation and deny any culpability for what the Ugandan parliament is considering.
To my mind, the most fascinating segment of the interview is a statement by Mr. Hunter about how The Family purportedly tried to stop the kill-the-gays bill with secret behind-the-scenes negotiations. Hunter implies that the international publicity that has developed around the legislation has thwarted The Family’s behind-the-scenes efforts to get Ugandan leaders to squelch the kill-the-gays legislation.
But in doing so, he admits—and it seems to me, without realizing he has done so—the extensive, blatant involvement of The Family and other right-wing Western religio-political groups in African politics, as a powerful neo-colonial force. He admits, in other words, what he and his allies have sought to convince Africans of re: Western progressives: namely, that the religious right has been using Africa and the people of Africa in a cynical political game to further the culture wars of the West.
Here’s what Hunter says:
We didn’t want to go too public at first. You’ve, you know, forced us public, you and others, and that’s okay. But there, one of the problems with going public too soon is, in Uganda and all of Africa, one of the cries goes up of neo-colonialism and it has a lot of resonance, unfortunately. And so we were trying to kill it quietly. But we don’t mind it being public now.
Fascinating logic at work here, isn’t it? A highly secretive, well-funded, influential politico-religious group works hard to determine political developments in a developing nation. Then when those developments take a malevolent turn, this secretive and influential politico-religious wants to deny any connection to the developments it has set into motion.
And it wants to turn around and blame those trying desperately to bring publicity to the very dangerous situation, and to accuse them of making the situation more dangerous by shining the light of media attention on it! With the claim that shining that light on the dangerous situation is a form of neo-colonialism that makes the situation worse, since it elicits backlash against those who resent being re-colonized . . . .
When the blatant, obvious colonialism being exposed by the publicity that seeks to draw world attention to an exceptionally dangerous situation is on the part of those who have been working for years to influence attitudes and political developments in Africa, and who do not want to have their neo-colonialism revealed for what it is . . . .
Come to think of it, the argument that Bob Hunter is advancing here is very much like the argument that National Catholic Reporter writer John Allen (who, to my knowledge, has never addressed the role of The Family and the American religious right in Uganda) advances in his recent articles on Catholic silence about the Ugandan situation. Allen argues that if Western progressives call Uganda to accountability for its anti-gay legislation, there will be a push-back effect vs. Western neo-colonialism.
Which raises the question again for me (and here): where does Allen’s narrative about the African church, which is consistently silent about the role of the American religious right and neoconservatives in Africa, but consistently oppositional to Western progressive groups in Africa, originate? What are its ties to American politico-religious groups like The Family?
