The Youtube video posted by the folks over at Invisible Children has been viewed 28 million times over the last three days. The movement has certainly gained momentum, and awareness of the Ugandan civil war is at an all-time high. Or is it?
People are talking a lot about Joseph Kony. I even hear Rick Santorum named him as a potential running mate for the upcoming election! Not really. Take it easy, people. Everyone knows that Santorum's VP will be Kirk Cameron. Settle down.
Joseph Kony is bad. He kidnaps kids and makes them fight. He wants to topple the Ugandan government and establish a theocratic dictatorship based on a blend of fundamentalist Christianity and ritualistic tribal practices. He's a crazy, violent, dangerous man and yesterday everyone from George Clooney to Kim Kardashian had something to say about it.
Diddy tweeted: "Dear Joseph Kony, I'm Gonna help Make you FAMOUS!!!! We will stop YOU #StopKONY ! All 6,OOO,OOO of my followers RT NOW!!! Pls!"
Rihanna said: "#KONY2012 Spread the word!!! PLEASE go to Invisiblechildren.com Even if its 10 minutes… Trust me, you NEED to know about this! #1LOVE"
Now, awareness is great and stuff, but what are these celebutards and suddenly globally aware Facebook activists expecting to happen? Yeah, let's make Kony famous!!! WOOO!!! That's all fine, but... after he's famous, then what? Do they think Joseph Kony is sitting at home, watching the viral spread of his name online, saying to himself, "If that Youtube video gets liked ONE MORE TIME, I'll turn myself in to the authorities."
No, that would be stupid. He's probably thinking, "What? DIDDY doesn't think I'm cool? SHIT! The last 25 years of my life have been for NOTHING!"
I hate to break this to you, but Diddy and Rhianna do not give two shits about children in Africa. Neither do the millions of Americans who watched a Youtube video and had a sudden pang of empathy, followed by the decision to re-post or like the video, which was then followed by hours of smug, stupid, self-righteous satisfaction.
Want me to prove it? Here.
Which one is Uganda?
You have no damn clue where Uganda is. You couldn't tell me who the president of Uganda is. You have no idea who Yoweri Museveni is. You don't know anything about the Ugandan government, or how corrupt it is, or what the hell would happen if Joseph Kony was arrested. You're an idiot who responds to marketing. All of the people who got orgasmic yesterday over the Kony video are the same jackasses who got all excited about buying Toms.
Our generation is pathetic when it comes to activism. We don't read. We don't really follow news. There are exceptions, of course. If you were one of the rare people who could actually pick out Uganda on the map, then good for you. I was able to pick out Uganda on the map, too. Like me, you're (maybe) one step less fucked up than the average idiot. We are way too quick to jump on causes without knowing what is really going on.
My theory is that we do this as a way to make ourselves feel good, and not because we are actually concerned with changing the world in any kind of positive way. I bought a (Product) Red product one time. I felt really good about myself because I was indirectly, passively, lazily "helping" out Africa with... something. AIDS, maybe? I don't even remember. That's the whole point. I had no idea. My choice to spend an extra few dollars on a product because someone said that it was related to helping out someone far away from me was entirely motivated by narcissism and a lack of self-awareness.
The explosion of Kony awareness over the last few days is no different, in my estimation. Everyone is saying that the guy should be arrested. Yeah, that's a good idea, but what then? Will that stop the war in Uganda? Obviously not. There's no way. How do we know that Kony's second-in-command guy, the one who would take his place if he was gone, isn't ten times worse than Kony himself? Do we know if the arrest of Joseph Kony wouldn't completely destabilize Uganda? This war has been going on for almost THIRTY YEARS. Will arresting one dude really change anything?
Let's suggest for the sake of argument that it would. Let's say that the LRA would collapse and Uganda would be free. Incidentally, Joseph Kony hasn't been in Uganda for years, but let's pretend that we don't know that, and that the propaganda machine of Invisible Children spreads nothing but accurate, up-to-date information as they construct their narrative. They do mention that Kony isn't in Uganda in the video, very briefly, and this fact was lost in their MTV-style production (as evidenced by the fact that #Uganda was a top trending topic on twitter yesterday).
So, Kony is gone and Uganda belongs to the Ugandan government. Is that better for Uganda? Museveni has been the president of Uganda for a quarter of a century. The Ugandan parliament is notoriously corrupt. The Ugandan Army is guilty of a laundry list of human rights violations, and soldiers have been known to rape and loot with impunity. Oh, and what about the army of brainwashed child soldiers who would suddenly not have a leader? Are we expecting them to just put down their weapons and go hug all of the Americans who generously watched videos on Youtube? I may be too skeptical, but something tells me that the ARMY OF BRAINWASHED CHILD SOLDIERS may be a little confused, and would likely react to the death of their leader in an unpredictable way.
Make no mistake, the LRA is bad. There is no real way to convey just how bad they are. However, it is a horrible mistake to assume that any other political or military force in that region is any better. Also, the LRA isn't really the worst problem that Uganda is facing. Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama, describing the Invisible Children movement, said:
"To call the campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, its portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. At the height of the war between especially 1999 and 2004, large hordes of children took refuge on the streets of Gulu town to escape the horrors of abduction and brutal conscription to the ranks of the LRA. Today most of these children are semi-adults. Many are still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis."
All of the rhetoric from Invisible Children does is to enflame Americans in passive activism. It does nothing to solve any real problems. The filmmakers are (probably) good-intentioned, but frighteningly shortsighted and ignorant. That's a best-case scenario. If I was just a little bit more cynical, I would think that they didn't really care about these kids in Uganda, and that all of this creative marketing and posturing amounts to nothing more than an expression of some kind of guilty, "White Man's Burden" mentality. Invisible Children has no clear objective beyond making a lot of noise and drawing a lot of attention... to what? Mostly, it seems like the attention (and a LOT of donation money) pretty much gets funneled back to... Invisible Children.
If you really want to get involved in helping the world, it takes more than a click of your mouse, or watching a video on Youtube. If you honestly think that making noise is the same thing as making a difference, then you need to wake up. Educate yourself, dear reader.
(If you are interested in getting involved with a charitable organization, or finding a cause worth supporting, check out http://www.hrw.org/)
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