Following on from my piece on
the rise and fall of Lana Del Rey (LDR) I now turn my attention to
another ‘rise and fall’ story. Kony 2012 was, much in the same way as
LDR, the very best and the very worst of the Internet. Kony 2012 became a cause
celebre of the Internet with people sharing the video endlessly on social
networks and extoling people to ‘DO THE RIGHT THING’. I must admit it was
refreshing for me to see in amongst the cute cat pictures and ‘OMG’ status
updates, people taking an interest in something other than themselves. I should
have known it was too good to be true.
If you’re sitting there,
wondering who or what Kony is, then I will do my best to give you a very
limited history lesson, although if you don’t know who he is I would be more
concerned about the fact that you’ve clearly been living under a rock with mole
people for the last month. Joseph Kony is the leader of the ‘Lord Resistance
Army’ (LRA), which came to notice sometime around 1987. It is important to note
that the creation of the LRA came following power struggles and wars between Milton
Obote andIdi Amin following Uganda gaining it’s
independence from Britain in 1962. The goal of the LRA is supposedly to
overthrow the current Uganda government and establish a theocratic state based
on the Judeo-Christian ‘Ten-Commandments’ and the Acholi
tradition. Kony and the LRA aim to consistently undermine the government of
Uganda and will use any methods to achieve this including but not limiting to
the attacking of civilians, destroying homes and mutilating bodies.
Not that all of this isn’t
horrific enough but what Kony is probably most well known for and what the Kony
2012 video focuses on is the creation of child soldiers. For the LRA these
children are often made commit unspeakable acts against their families first
and then throughout their time as child soldiers. There are many reasons why
child soldiers are used (with just a few listed here). Child soldiers are not a new phenomenon they have been
used predominantly in Central Africa for decades. Joseph Kony is not a new
phenomenon either. For many people it was the first time hearing his name, but
for the international community at large his name and the unspeakable horrors
he has committed in Central Africa has been heard many times before. The International Criminal
Court (ICC) investigated the situation in Uganda beginning in 1987, the investigation culminated in 2005 with
the ICC issuingarrest warrants for Joseph Kony, Raska
Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Vincent Otti, all members of the
LRA.
That was 2005, now seven years
ago. Despite the international profile of Kony, he still has not been caught.
The Kony 2012 campaign sought to stop that. Its main goal was to spread
the word about Kony and to hopefully use the power of people and social media
to pressure international governments and organizations to catch Kony and bring
him to justice. It was very noble. The video ended with a plea to spread the Kony
2012 message, to get involved, to change the world, to use social media for
something other than cat pictures, to make a difference.
Almost instantly the video went
viral, released on March 5, 2012 as of today (April 2, 2012) it has 86,552,094
hits on YouTube. People tweeted, facebooked, Google+ (well a limited amount G+
it), generally they spread it around their friends, their followers, their
families. The overwhelming point of the video was that we could change this.
That simply by making other people more aware of Kony we could cause
governments to push for his arrest, help the Ugandan people recover and most
importantly help child soldiers.
Almost as instantly the backlash
occurred. For me, it began with a simple status update from one of my friends
positing a map and asking all those who posted the Kony 2012 video to point
out Uganda on a map. It was a fair point. For most people, twenty-seven minutes
before they watched the Kony video they didn’t care about and had no idea where
Uganda was. My immediate question was, why does it matter? Is it a case that
unless you’ve been aware the whole time you cannot get involved at a later
stage? Is that how revolutions work? Did the Arab Spring only begin and end
with fifty people who had been involved from the beginning? Has any revolution
ever worked like that? No. No it has not. I had to wonder why the backlash? Why
is there never any outcry about the endless ‘Just had worst day ever’ statuses
or ‘Oh it’s so sunny out, tanning FTW.’ Do people only get upset when people
post stuff they don’t believe in? Or post stuff to be cool? That’s all social
media is. That’s all Facebook is, Twitter is, Google+ is. Almost all the
interactions that are deemed ‘social media’ can fall into one simple cry; ‘Look
at me!’ That’s it. We all do it and I assure you I’m just as guilty as you are.
The immediate backlash, the one
that made meme’s of Carl Weathers (although some of them we’re pretty hilarious) is so typical of the cynicism
available on the Internet. I understood the point some people were
making, which was, until half an hour ago, you didn’t care, why do you care
now? Or the, at that stage very quiet, protesting of human rights groups and
organizations that the Kony 2012 campaign was taking something very
complicated and reducing it into a viral video designed to pluck at people’s
heart strings. It was blindsiding people with the directors cute innocent
little boy and causing them not to ask the pertinent question like, ‘Why should
we send foreign armies into countries they have no right to be in?’ and ‘What
about the role of the Uganda government and the unqualified support that Kony
2012 was offering them?’
What followed the immediate
backlash, one which I would call a knee-jerk reaction based on cynicism,
followed an actual backlash based on real facts and worries, expressed here. The Visible
Children tumblr dissected the group’s financials, its involvement
with the Ugandan government and the wealth of incorrect information in the Kony
2012 video. This backlash attempted to point out the flaws in supporting
Kony 2012 at the expensive of groups like Amnesty International, War Child
and AMREF
to name but a few. This is the type of backlash I can get behind. One that
points out the glaring problems in the Kony 2012 campaign and the
problems in the Invisible Children organization. A lot of the information out
there was well reasoned, well researched and underlined that there are many
organizations working in Uganda and elsewhere in Central Africa to stop Kony
and his ilk, without the shadow of dubious practices that lingers over
Invisible Children.
What happened next in the Kony
2012 saga could not have been predicted by anyone. Jason Russell, the
co-founder of Invisible Children and star of the Kony 2012 video
suffered a very public melt down. I am not a doctor, so I will not comment on
why or how, but according to the Invisible Children statement, the weeks following the release of the
Kony 2012 video had taken a ‘severe emotional toll’ on Russell which
manifested itself in his very public breakdown. There is a video of his
breakdown available online**. Russell’s breakdown diverted attention away from Kony
2012 both the negative and the positive, and much of what has been said
about Kony in recent weeks has been confined to discussing Russell’s breakdown
and not Kony himself.
I compared the rise and fall of
Kony to the rise and fall of Lana Del Rey earlier and I stand by this
comparison. Although Del Rey’s fall from grace, for me, had nothing to do with
Del Rey herself and everything to do with the Internet, Kony 2012 is slightly
different. There was cause for the backlash, and only time will tell whether
Invisible Children and the Kony 2012 campaign will recover. I would
imagine it won’t. The lasting legacy of Kony 2012 will be deficiencies
in Invisible Children as a charity and Russell’s breakdown. Lost amongst the
shuffle is the child soldiers and the victims of horrific atrocities not only
in Central Africa but all over the world. Kony 2012 has something else
to offer though. Hopefully it will help the likes of Amnesty and other
high-profile human rights organizations see how they can connect with a wider
audience. It should not be the case that you need a flashy video to get people
to care about other Human beings, but we live in the age of the internet, with
so much content available online, charities and rights organizations need
something to put them ahead of the curve, even if it is flash. It’s not just
organizations though that can learn something from the Kony 2012 campaign. In
Ireland, Eamon Gilmore (who is Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs) announced that he and the Irish people strongly
support bringing Joseph Kony to justice. I can assure you, he did not make the
announcement without the Kony 2012 campaign, either by directly watching
the video or simply by reading the endless emails and letters from constituents
urging him to do something, after they themselves watched the video.
This should be the lasting
legacy of the Kony 2012. It is good to be aware of charities intentions,
of their financials and their financial backers, it is absolutely necessary to
ensure you give to only accredited charities that give your money directly to
the people they and you want to help. Given the concerns raised about Invisible
Children I myself would be reluctant to support the charity and that is fine
given the concerns over how Invisible Children handles itself. What is not ok
is to forget about the impact that one single twenty-seven minute video had on
the internet. Yet, that is exactly what is happening, when was the last time
you heard Kony mentioned without Russell’s breakdown or a meme being produced
in the same sentence? It’s been a while for me.
For those of you who watched the
Kony 2012 campaign video and felt moved to action, then continue it. You do not
need Invisible Children to highlight the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony.
You do not need it to be popular in order to get involved in human rights or
global politics. If you want to do something, then do something. For those who
watched the Kony 2012 and felt moved to mockery and cynicism even without
knowing of the problems with the Invisible Children organization then there’s
nothing I can do for you. Continue to upload your memes, your facebook status
void of anything worthwhile and continue to tweet insults to celebrities on
twitter. Honestly, you have my blessing, the Internet is nothing without the
freedom to do what you want. For those of you who are unsure now about
Invisible Children and Kony because of what has come to light, I urge you to
contact one of the many worthwhile organizations listed throughout this post
and see what you can do to help. It’s important we remember the legacy of Kony
2012 not as one mans breakdown or one organization’s dubious dealing, but as a
period of time where for once in the Western World social media was actually
being used for what it was created for; change.
The best and the worst of the
internet still reminds me of the best and the worst of the human spirit, just
funnier.
**This blog will not link to
something which is a very private breakdown happening in public, out of respect
to all of those with mental health issues, so Google it if you must.
