Kony 2012
I wasn’t born when Franco died. And my parents before me didn’t have to witness the Nazi horrors. I’m white, I’m agnostic and I’m middle class. I have no problems to speak of. There is a roof over my head, a comfy bed to sleep in and a fridge nicely filled with organic produce.
And yet, through my life, the same questions kept popping up: What would I have done? Would have I joined the resistance? Would have I collaborated? – As an homosexual, I would have ended up in the camps in Nazi Germany. And under Franco, I would have most probably been arrested and tortured. Unless I’d hid of course! Unless I had no balls and ignored my inalienable right to love another human being, regardless of his gender.
I, like most of us, can’t imagine having been on any other side but the right one. The one for liberty, the one for equality, the one for brotherhood. Russia has taught me differently. In a land where smiling in public is regarded as an offence and where the gays are currently fighting against a bill whose only purpose is to silence them once and for all, I fled the minute I could. This wasn’t my land and this wasn’t my fight. Or was it?
I’m pretty cynical and quite frankly utterly selfish. I don’t read newspapers, I don’t watch the news. I stay home with my lovers: Dumas, Balzac and Stendhal. But something has awakened my political activism. A video, a simple YouTube video that shook me awake and inspired this column: KONY 2012
Its message is clear: to make Joseph Kony, a Ugandan guerrilla group leader, Head of the LRA (Lord Resistance Army), number 1 on the ICC (International Criminal Court) worst criminal list, the most famous man on the planet; not to celebrate him but to make him known to the world so that something can be done. So that he can be stopped. Stopped from abducting children from their home and turning them into soldiers. Stopped from rapping, enslaving, sexually enslaving and murdering tens of thousands of children – which he has done freely for over twenty years, while staying completely unknown to the rest of the world. I remember when I was a kid how I was told that we didn’t know about Nazi concentration camps until after the war and that if we had known, things would have been different. Well, let’s the world know about him.
The campaign, fuelled by the outrage and dedications of millions has grown stronger, spreading worldwide thanks to (and I never thought I’d say that) social networks. They’ve managed by simply informing the people (and people caring) to convince Barack Obama to send troops there, even though Kony is no threat to the USA and that there are no financial gains to be made from this. The pressure is on. But the pressure has to stay on. And to stay on, we have to stand. In a world where we digest news faster than our breakfast, how wonderful would it be if by just doing what we do every day anyway (I.e. facebooking, tweeting, etc…) we could actually make a difference? Us: privileged, problem-free Europeans.
In risking repeating myself, I’m a cynical egocentric son of a mother. But I can’t help but face the fact that I’ve already lived through countless wars and not really cared. What does that make me? What does that make us?
Compelling case, don’t you think?
This campaign is led by the Invisible Children association which has come under great scrutiny now that their video has reached over 80 million views on YouTube. The video is cleverly put together, forging a strong case about an abominable man and making you believe that YOU matter and that YOU can do something after having spent a whole 29 minutes on the matter. It’s appealing! By tweeting and facebooking, YOU can actually change the world, isn’t that something? And all you had to do was take from granted a video on YouTube.
I remember when I was a kid how I was told that we didn’t know about Nazi concentration camps until after the war and that if we had known, things would have been different. This video gives us an opportunity to do something or so it claims. I applaud the fact that people care and that people are paying attention but isn’t it just a fad yet again? A Buzz on the internet that will slowly be forgotten as fast as it was discovered? And what about the real issues behind it all? Can we truly be informed by a simple video clip?
In risking repeating myself, I’m a cynical egocentric son of a mother. But I can’t help but face the fact that I’ve already lived through countless wars and not really cared. What does that make me? What does that make us? And shouldn’t we care more than just quickly fixing our ego by patting ourselves on the back because we cared for half a second without actually trying to get informed properly?
