KONY 2012
First, let me say that I am astounded by the amount of publicity this campaign has received. But I am not astounded in a happy or pleasant way. Let it be known that I do not support KONY 2012. The so-called documentary video is propaganda in the truest sense of the word, and I am appalled to see that so many people have so readily hopped onto the bandwagon (ten million viewers within 48 hours to be exact). The video itself is poorly made, and consistently appeals to emotions rather than to facts and figures. Invisible Children is a suspicious organisation and apparently only 32% of its expenses in 2011 actually went towards the children (not entirely sure, please do check up on this). The very idea of going after Kony (who isn’t even active or in Uganda) as if he were single-handedly responsible for all of this distorts the real issue, and is also highly reminiscent of what happened with the Osama manhunt, and have we not learnt anything from that at all? We don’t solve real world issues by scapegoating a single man to death. The LRA will simply find a new leader, so long as the idea is there. And let me remind you that approximately 15000-20000 children starve to death everyday, but we happily let this slide as a fact simply to be acknowledged and accepted. That’s because it is easier to thumbs up and share a video on Facebook than it is for us to actually get together as a species and to admit that we are all, as part of humanity, guilty of these charges, and to come up with some real solutions to our problems. Plus, there are other political questions involving foreign policies as well, and the fact that Uganda has oil has only made me that much more sceptical. I don’t know. I just don’t feel that this is right. I fear such efforts cannot and will not end well. Let me know what you think.
Thank goodness there are people like you around Tim. People with a sensible measured approach to life. Well done.
Thanks for your comment. Here is a Telegraph article I found which you may also find somewhat informative.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/uganda/9131469/Joseph-Kony-2012-growing-outrage-in-Uganda-over-film.html
Thanks Tim, I live in Australia and just like everywhere else in the World I guess the Kony stuff is everywhere. I was actually planning on adding the Kony video to my facebook page when I ‘accidently’ stumbled across your blog which prompted me to look into it further, so thanks for that, you made me look beyond the spin and develop an informed view rather than being simply drawn into the general mind-set and that’s important……David
You are from Australia! You will be glad to know then that Jason Russell, the so-called genius behind Invisible Children, appeared on Australia’s Today Show a couple of days back, and the interviewers were actually clapping at him in commendation of his good works!
But one’s definition of a hero is another’s of a villain. For those of you who are still at sea about this, here is the way I personally see it – redux and revised (but you shouldn’t take it just from me, mind).
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:WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS:
Invisible Children produced and propagated a manipulative video which was purposely misleading, and which appealed to the emotions of its audiences rather than to straight facts and figures that would allow its viewers to make rational judgments of their own. The video calls for immediacy of action and for “justice”, but fails to clarify that Kony has been inactive for at least six years and that the LRA is not, at present, of any real threat to Uganda (the video clips used in the documentary were taken from c2003; we are in 2012). The people of Facebook, being so gullible and so emotionally driven as they often are, are therefore led to feel burdened by some kind of a moral obligation to jump onto the bandwagon in support this cause to bringing this evil, evil man to justice.
But Invisible Children also fails to mention that only 32% of the money received will be going directly to Africa, and even a smaller amount of that to the children. Jason claims that he believes in educating the Western world as well, and supposedly that is where the other portion of the funds are going. But one only needs to look beyond the surface to see the irony of this claim. Jason is against Kony indoctrinating children but what he is doing himself is nothing short of indoctrination (even in the video he literally brainwashed his own kid). Responses to this criticism that I’ve seen have been along the lines of “as long as it raises awareness, who cares?” But I think the issue here isn’t that of awareness. We are all mostly quite aware of our world’s problems. At least to the extent that poverty exists. Or climate change, and war and terror, and so forth. But awareness alone does not solve anything. We need people to be correctly informed, not misled into taking hasty actions which they will come later to regret.
Ultimately, it boils down to the cause. Invisible Children wishes to militarise the Ugandan government. They petition for US intervention and for more troops to be sent over to Uganda such that they can launch another wild goose chase on this “world’s-most-wanted” fugitive (reminiscent?), in the process destroying the peace which the people of Uganda have fought for so long to achieve. In doing so Invisible Children supports the Ugandan army which is in itself corrupt and guilty of similar atrocities, and by going after Kony (who probably isn’t even in Uganda), lives of the children which comprise what remains of his army will be put at stake. Their so-called cause, having received so much support and public attention, will also provoke the US government to proclaim yet another “war on terror” and thence will justify its pointless meddling on another foreign country’s affairs, yet again.
For all these reasons, I declare that Invisible Children is the real villain in this whole story. Even if Kony is captured or killed, that will achieve practically nothing because someone else will easily rise up to finish where he left off. I am not implying in any sense that Kony isn’t guilty or doesn’t deserve justice, but this is clearly not the way to go about solving our worldly issues. We must encourage people to think critically, not to jump blindly into supporting some cause just because some video went viral on the Internet and whoever doesn’t “share” or “like” it is heartless and apparently supports child rape and murder. Plus, there are better charity programmes you could donate to, through which your money will actually be put to good use — instead of feeding into this cycle of war and terror as Invisible Children so blatantly intends to promote. What Uganda doesn’t need is the burden of all this Kony-manhunt nonsense propagated through a culture of mindless hipsters who would rather encourage the misunderstanding of this country’s true and genuine problems in favour of an imaginary one, than spend five extra minutes of their time to do their own research before committing to such dubious and dangerous conclusions.
My friends have invited me to go on a rally for KONY2012; an offer which sadly I will now have to decline!
yeah… and the saddest part is large groups of kids shouting repeated statements is sooooo 2011. It was borderline cool last year… look… they even put their fists in the air like a bunch of useful idiots
kid #1: “quick hurry I need something to rage against the machine… like everybody’s doing it and, like, I want to be relevant”.
kid #2: “oh dude, there’s this kony2012 thing. I think its some rapper from africa that’s running for president. He said he’ll give us a bunch of stuff and and rich people eat children… plus their rally t-shirt will look totally awesome with some new jeans I just got for my birthday, brah”.